For more than two decades, my life has been shaped by science, surgery, endurance, and faith.
I am a surgeon, a scientist, a triathlete, and a follower of Jesus Christ. Much of my professional life has been devoted to healing some of the most fragile hearts — the hearts of children — while exploring the science of healing, regeneration, and human resilience.
When I was younger, life felt like climbing a mountain.
A very high mountain. The goal was clear. The direction was upward. The measure was height.
Society showed me the pictures: success, recognition, achievement, influence. Many people described the path — study hard, train harder, push through difficulty, reach the next level, keep climbing.
I believed them. And in many ways, they were right.
My journey began far from where I am today — as a young immigrant building a life in an unfamiliar place. The early years were not easy. A new language. A new culture. An unspoken pressure to prove that I belonged. There were no shortcuts and no safety nets. What I had was discipline, a deep desire to learn, and a stubborn refusal to stop.
That season taught me something essential: that difficulty, when met with persistence, becomes a foundation. Not just for a career — but for a character.
I trained rigorously in cardiac surgery and developed a deep curiosity for scientific discovery. Those years gave me precision and perseverance, and they awakened in me a desire to understand not only how the human body heals, but what enables a person to endure, recover, and grow.
It was also during those early years that I became a Christian. My faith grew quietly, personally, and deeply — in a place where Christianity was not widely practiced. Later, after moving to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow, I encountered a more practical and living expression of faith — one that reshaped my heart, broadened my understanding of God, and transformed my spiritual life.
After my research fellowship, I pursued specialized training in pediatric cardiac surgery. Those years were intense and defining. I learned the technical precision required to operate on a child’s heart, and I came to understand the sacred responsibility of holding not only a heart, but a family’s entire hope, in my hands.
Eventually, I became an attending pediatric cardiac surgeon and established my own research laboratory. Over time, I became a Professor of Surgery, continuing to work at the intersection of clinical care, science, and discovery.
The mountain had been climbed.
But as I climbed higher, I began to see something I could not see from below.
Some of what I had been told was true. Hard work matters. Discipline matters. Skill matters.
But some of it was illusion.
Height does not guarantee peace. Recognition does not create lasting happiness. The view from the top is not the only beauty in life.
For many years, I believed the best scenery was waiting above me.
Then something shifted.
As I climbed higher, I began to notice that the beauty I had been chasing was not only at the summit. It was everywhere — in the landscape around me, in the details I had been moving too fast to see. I had been so focused on the next foothold that I had never paused to look sideways.
So I stepped off the main trail.
Not out of failure. Not out of exhaustion. But out of curiosity.
I began walking into the woods — exploring the paths that had no rankings, no titles, no clear destination. And what I found there was more beautiful than anything I had expected.
That turn — from climbing to exploring — began through something I never anticipated. Not a crisis, but an invitation. It arrived quietly, unexpectedly, through triathlon.
In my 50s, I suddenly began swimming. At first, I could barely complete 25 meters. I learned from YouTube videos, struggled through the water, and slowly improved stroke by stroke. Then came cycling — almost by accident, I bought a road bike without knowing much about gears or saddle height. I simply started riding. I fell. I even suffered a concussion. But I kept going.
Running was the most unlikely part. A knee injury from college had made it painful for decades. But as swimming and cycling strengthened my body, a quiet question emerged: Could I run again?
That question opened the door to triathlon.
Triathlon could have become another mountain — a race time, a ranking, a personal record. But for me, it was something different. It became exploration.
A small change in movement. A quieter breath. A better rhythm. A subtle signal from the body. Every day offered discovery. The race was no longer only a summit. The training itself became the woods.
Managing three sports quickly became overwhelming, so I reached out to the professional coach I found online — Melissa. Through GPS files, occasional messages, and careful guidance, she somehow understood what my body needed. With her coaching, real progress began.
What started as physical training gradually became something much deeper.
Two years later, by God’s grace, I completed an Ironman.
That journey changed me.
At some point, I stopped looking only upward.
I stepped off the main trail and began walking into the woods.
There was no official route there. No ranking. No title. No clear destination. But there was something else — silence, small details, unexpected beauty, curiosity.
As I began exploring this new landscape, I realized something practical: I did not need all the tools I had used for climbing. Some were still useful: discipline, patience, consistency, courage. But others had become heavy — the need to prove, the need for recognition, the need to compare, the need to carry every opinion.
Those tools helped me climb. They were not needed in the woods.
So I began to put them down.
With fewer tools, I became lighter. And with less weight, I could notice more — the path under my feet, the light between trees, the rhythm of my breath, the quiet movement of life.
Work stress, physical discomfort, and mental fatigue began to lose their power. In their place came renewed energy, clarity, gratitude, and purpose. Endurance became more than a sport. It became a spiritual classroom.
The summit taught me discipline. The woods taught me how to see.
Today, I remain deeply committed to excellence — but excellence no longer serves ambition alone. It serves clarity, presence, peace, and a life that feels fully alive.
I no longer ask only how high I can climb. I ask what I can notice today. What I can learn. What I can receive.
This blog is a reflection of that journey. It explores the transition from expansion to integration, from ambition to alignment, from external validation to internal clarity, from intensity to peace, and from achievement to gratitude.
Through surgery, science, endurance training, faith, mentorship, solitude, family, and everyday life, I have become increasingly interested in a different kind of exploration — not only the exploration of the world, but the exploration of the inner world. A world of attention, awareness, meaning, peace, craftsmanship, and gratitude.
My hope here is not to provide perfect answers. It is to share observations from the journey — lessons learned slowly through experience, reflection, failure, change, and grace.
The first half of life taught me how to build.
Triathlon opened the door to the second half.
And the second half is teaching me how to live.
Perhaps that is what the second half of life is — not reaching another summit, but walking lightly enough to discover the beauty that was never on the map.
The Heart of Endurance 