Courage of the little one

I'm at the HUSM pediatric clinic now. It's lunchtime and the halls are all empty, a contrast to the earlier bustling and commotion when the clinic was at full swing.
Just now I helped a nurse here to draw blood from a little baby, whose skin is still red like a newborn. He is so tiny that it saddened me to know he is very ill, for what else would he be lying on the hospital bed looking at me with those doe eyes so innocently? I didn't actually do anything, my main job was to comfort the baby because the mother was not around at the time. So I caressed his forehead, hoping that he'll feel safe. Then the nurse took out a hollow needle and prick his hand, all the while I was trying to comfort the baby. When the nurse finally pricked his hand, I saw that the baby was shocked at the sudden pain and he cried. What is worse that the nurse had to move the needle around in the baby hand because she couldn't find his vein and there is no blood coming out. However, when I half expected the baby to cry harder and louder, he didn't. He just cried a little more and then fell silent. It is just as if he was trying to endure the pain bravely. He vomited out some milk but that was all.
Finally, after a while (30 s or 1 min), blood finally came out of the needle. The required volume of blood was 3 ml (which is by the way, is quite a big volume from so little a child) but the baby didn't cry. Relatively, he is quite silent all the way. It was only when the nurse took out the needle the cried a little.
But my God, he is to me the bravest baby in the world. And my heart goes to you, little one. I hope you get well, insyaAllah.

I wonder, can someone forget how to live?

It's been awhile since I've posted anything remotely useful here. Back in the day I used to go on and on about the things that cross my mind as I seem to have an opinion on everything. Now this web space is filled with indicators of the ups and downs of my erratic patterned moods.

Not a very pleasant thing, I know, especially for some that come looking for a sparring of ideas or changed perspective.

However, I want to state now that when the capacity of the mind is spent on endless acrobatics of mental processes that goes hand in hand with postgraduate study that by the end of the day the very essence of life seem to seep away from your being, then there is none left to ponder on other things. This is why usually you see PhD candidates and sometimes even MSc candidates move around like zombies, mumbling incomprehensibles and often only communicate using eye movements and facial expressions. Most energy is spent in the head, you see. Everything else only runs with the bare minimum.

But I'm thankful that finally my life isn't devoured fully by my responsibilities of completing my thesis. Slowly but surely I'm chipping away at the high walls around me and I think I saw a light shining somewhere. I try to make time for other things because I think that to put a part of life on hold while tinkering on another is not a very good idea. It'd be hard to catch up on life because it moves with time, it never stops just because you tell it to. So never let it pass you by because who knows, maybe you'd be out of practice and have to do it all over again. Living, I mean, not the thesis haha ;)