Clowns

There are places you expect to learn life lessons. Those places are usually the worst place to find a life lesson. The best ones come from places you'd never imagine. Today, mine comes from clowns.

Obviously, I don't mean clowns of the circus variety. I'm talking about the people I go to for laughs, for easy entertainment, the people I open myself up to because when I do that they reward me by making me smile. In this case, the characters of Scrubs. Yes, really. If you think I'm a tool for getting a life lesson from Scrubs, you know where the Back button is.

I'm not really current with the shows I like. This is because TV has utterly failed me, and so I've turned to YouTube to provide my video entertainment. This being the case, I hadn't really seen any of Season 8 of Scrubs. So when I was watching Episode 7, My New Role, it kind of caught me off guard. The episode reminded me of something important that we all have to face sooner or later.

Life is full of thankless jobs.

Let's look at Dr. Cox. New Chief of Medicine. Works his ass off behind a desk all day for the sole purpose of making the hospital run better for everyone involved, from doctors to nurses to physicians to patients. He's trapped in there, forced by his position to be an ass to the people to whom he's closest, never able to get out and do what he really loves, which is helping the patients. He's miserable, but he knows the job needs to be done, and everyone knows he's the only one tough enough to do it.

Dr. Dorian. Or JD, since freaking nobody calls him Dr. Dorian. He has the unenviable task of riding Cox to do the things that really need to be done. Cox hates him for it. He hates doing it. There can never be any kind of happiness there until one or both of them leaves their position. Unfortunately, he's the only one who has any kind of pull with Dr. Cox. The friendship he worked years and years to cultivate has been perverted into this twisted, antagonistic relationship.

It scares me to think about this, because I know it's real. There are really roles where people will hate you for what you do, even though you're doing everything you can to help them.

I can't write any more about this. Later.