Ars longa, vita brevis

In super specialities or as some people like to call them sub specialities e.g Orthopaedics, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, etc., it takes a lot of years to be an expert in the field. And as soon as you develop a rapport of a good surgeon or become good at it, its time to die. In super-specialties — or what many call subspecialties — such as Orthopaedics, Neurosurgery, Plastic Surgery, and Cardiac Surgery, mastery does not arrive quickly.

It consumes decades.

First comes youth, sacrificed to textbooks while others are living ordinary lives. Then come residency years filled with sleepless nights, humiliation, missed weddings, broken relationships, and operating rooms that slowly become more familiar than one’s own home.

And even after all that, true expertise still remains distant.

A surgeon spends years merely learning how not to harm.

Then one day, almost quietly, the hands begin to mature. The movements become economical. Judgment sharpens. Complications are anticipated before they occur. Fear becomes calmer. Patients begin to trust you. Juniors begin to imitate you. Your name slowly develops a reputation.

You finally become the surgeon you dreamed of being twenty-five years earlier.

And then biology arrives with cruel timing.

The eyes weaken.

The neck stiffens.

The back hurts after long surgeries.

The hands that once worked sixteen hours begin to tremble slightly from fatigue.

Just when wisdom and technical mastery finally meet together in one human being…

…it is almost time to leave the stage.

That may be one of the quiet tragedies of surgery.

A concert pianist can still create beauty in old age. A philosopher can grow wiser with time. A writer may produce masterpieces at seventy.

But surgery is chained to the body.

And the body is temporary.

Perhaps that is why older surgeons often appear melancholic. Not because they fear death itself, but because after spending an entire lifetime becoming extraordinary at one thing, they realize they have only a brief window left to perform it at their highest level.

Art is long, life is short.
— Hippocrates