I Got ‘Brain Surgery’ from a Doctor Whose Card I Found on the Street
Credit to Author: Daisy Jones| Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 15:42:03 +0000
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.
I have spent quite a lot of time being stressed. When I was freelancing, I would roll out of bed and pick up a can of Red Bull in one swift, practiced motion. I would then down the energy drink before my eyes had even opened. Next, I’d sit at my laptop and type until I remembered to eat some food, which would be a handful of vegetarian sausages shoved in my mouth very quickly. This is the life you chose, I would think, teeth grinding, confused about the time, panicking about my overdraft. If you keep working, maybe one day you will have some leisure.
I feel less stressed these days. I have a job that doesn’t destroy me, and I make a habit of prioritizing things that bring me happiness, like eating rice balls in bed or doing “Word Up” by Chromeo on Dance Dance Revolution. But we could all do with more relaxation—especially if you’re a burnt out millennial. Most of us are broke. Our rented apartments are moldy. Our IKEA furniture is falling apart. We spend our time—our precious, finite alive time—in offices, or behind a cash register, or wherever pays the bills. Capitalism is a bitch, etc.
Which is why, when I was handed this card in the street the other day, I felt intrigued:
I didn’t leave the “surgery” empty-handed. Sofia had secured a medical bracelet to my wrist upon arrival, and when I left she gave me a pot of “development solution” for “aftercare.” The pot, of course, had nothing inside it. “Fill to base of neck with your favorite drinkable liquid,” it read on the label. “Drink and repeat up to three times.”
In some ways, the bottle is an apt metaphor for the whole thing. Forgive me for sounding like a philosophy student who just discovered Karl Marx, but in a climate as demanding as ours—one that teaches us that labor is money, and money is success, and therefore leisure is anti-money, and leisure is anti-success—it can be hard to make time for yourself. Relaxation is so fleeting, and so often full of guilt, that it can be easier to indulge in when it’s dressed up as something medical, something beneficial to our betterment, something that might make us more productive.
Or maybe I’m just being bleak about it and I should get back to work.
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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.