For many years, research after surgery felt like a second job.
After a long operation, many surgeons could go home.
But I often went back to writing, experiments, meetings, grants, and mentoring.
At times, I wondered why I was doing this.
Why continue working after already giving so much in the operating room?
Why carry another responsibility when no one seemed to recognize the effort?
Why keep running when the work was exhausting and often invisible?
In those years, research still felt connected to expansion.
More grants.
More publications.
More productivity.
More proof.
I kept going because that was what I had trained myself to do.
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Over time, however, something changed.
The same activity began to feel different.
Research was no longer only another burden after clinical work.
It became one of the few places where I could breathe.
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Research gives me a different kind of space.
A quieter space.
There is writing.
There is creativity.
There is the slow building of an idea.
There is the possibility of asking a question that did not exist before.
Most importantly, there are young people.
Students.
Trainees.
Mentees.
A small lab group where communication is respectful, honest, and positive.
In that space, I feel something very different from the clinical side.
I feel growth.
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This helped me understand why I still write grants.
It is not mainly for recognition anymore.
Not for title.
Not for institutional approval.
Not to prove that I still matter.
I write because funding protects the garden.
It allows ideas to continue.
It allows young people to grow.
It allows mentorship to happen.
It allows my creative mind to stay alive.
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Research once felt like a second job after surgery.
Now I see it as one of the few places where my mind can breathe.
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This shift changed the meaning of the work.
Earlier, research was another mountain to climb.
Now, it feels more like a garden to cultivate.
A garden does not grow through force alone.
It needs attention.
Patience.
Protection.
Consistency.
It also needs the right environment.
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That is what I am trying to preserve now.
Not endless expansion.
Not pressure for more.
But a small, meaningful space where creativity, mentorship, and discovery can continue.
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Clinical work uses my hands.
Research and mentorship allow my inner life to keep growing.
And perhaps that is why, even after surgery, I still return to the work.
Not because I must prove something.
But because something in that quiet space still feels alive.
The Heart of Endurance 