Grey's Anatomy

Just watched another episode of Grey's Anatomy, and i find this particular episode rather meaningful. Although this story plot is like quite minor inside this episode, but i found it to have a deeper meaning. So basically this guy, who went to Hong Kong to get his short legs extended

(and references were made to Hong Kong being a crazy sort place where they break people's leg and put them back on again), had an infection or some sort or maybe just in severe pain, went to the Seattle Grace Hospital for treatment. The doctor in charge is none other than Mark Sloan and Callie Torres. This guy was feeling so bad in life because of his short height, and he certainly made everyone else feel bad for him because of his ill fortunes in life supposely because of his height.

Well, the part i find meaningful has nothing to do with this guy in pain. Rather, it is what Torres said during the operation to Sloan. The main outline of her conversation is that, she used to stood tall in the hospital, but after George (the guy intern in the same hospital whom she married and got divorced) she got shaved off (height wise metaphorically) around 1 inch, and after Erica (the female attending whom she had a relationship with) she got shaved off another few inches. I find this comparison of height rather interesting. Because apparently our success or status can be relate to height, the taller someone climbs, the more successful the person is. Here is a patient who is literally short and not confident at all, and here is a doctor who is not exactly short, but yet because of her encounters which kind of disappoint her.

While there is a saying that no one should be able to make us feel bad about ourselves, only we can make ourselves feel bad. I guess the logic behind it is to encourage people that as long as one stand tall no one can bring us down. The human spirit is celebrated in this context. However, personally i find that the human spirit is kind of not human spirit at all, because seriously it is not easy to have this kind of strong spirit, otherwise arguably we could say that it is not easy to be human at all. We get affected by the things that happen to us or said to us. It is not easy to ignore all the bad encounters in our lives and try to stand tall. We might try, success or failure, eventually we can either really have the human spirit, or we might just get use to failure such that it does not affect us anymore. The underlining factor here is the social interaction and social perspection. Can't say much about people who are truly individualistic and can really be confident, but most people view themselves through the eyes of other people, which is the kind of social component in our lives. We view fashion based on what other people wear, do stuff that is popular among peers. It is seriously not easy to "i am just who i am" based on my personal experience, because who i am can change with the kind of environment one live in. But the main point is not really to discuss metaphorically or metaphysically the impact of such issue.

The main ending point here is what Sloan said to Torres, which the main outline is something like asking her to walk tall, she was brave enough to get out there, she fought, she loved and she lost, and walk tall. It is not really say getting use to failures, but maybe rather to do not let failure get to us. Despite of the unmerciful Singapore society that is kind of unforgiving towards failure, falling once or twice does not mean that we will stay down forever. We can always learn from our mistakes, move on and still stand tall. Let no mistakes, failures or even bad experiencesbring us down, for every wrong step we take, we are 1 step nearer to taking the right path.