Shohei Ohtani, Attention Spans, and Elevation (Gratitude on Steroids)

Posted on November 26, 2025 by marylbrandt

How Shohei Ohtani became a super star…

Sahil Bloom shared this image in a recent newsletter, along with an explanation of how Ohtani used the “Harada system” to become the superstar he is.

*The chart Ohtani created as a freshman in high school to meet his goal of being drafted 1st in the Nippon Professional Baseball League.*

The story of the Harada system is delightful. It was developed by Takashi Harada, an junior high track and field coach in Osaka, Japan who realized that his young athletes needed more than just drills and strength training to succeed (in all ways). He developed a system for them to define their own goals and actions, and then used it to take his last place team (out of 380 schools!) to 1st place – a position they held for 6 years.

Source of this photo (thank you again, Austin Kleon)

Increasing our attention spans

Our ability to pay attention is how we accomplish the things that are important to us, whether it’s being one of the best (if not the best) baseball players in the world like Shohei Ihtani, or finishing a book that has been lying fallow on a computer for too long (Mea culpa).

Thinking about how to better pay attention led me to this post, which summarizes and shares a 4 minute video from Daniel Pink with his 5 step plan to improve our ability to pay attention👇

Set a baseline

See how long can you read a book until you are distracted

As you add steps 2-5 (below), repeat to monitor your improvement

Eliminate distractions

Make where you work a “no phone zone”

Close tabs and anything else on your computer that might distract you

No notifications on any device!

Create a focus ritual

It doesn’t matter what it is, but it matters that it exists

“It’s like hitting play on a playlist your brain already knows.”

Take breaks and move

“Think of your brain like a toddler… It melts down if you don’t give it snacks and naps.”

Reconnect attention to meaning

Take the time to articulate the “why” of what you doing

“It turns a chore into a choice.”

“Purpose fuels persistence.”

*Outside* article that is the source of this photo

Elevation (gratitude on steroids)

In 2000, Jonathan Haidt defined elevation, which he described as “a warm or glowing feeling in the chest [that] makes people want to become morally better themselves.” It’s the “thrill we experience when we see someone act with courage or compassion”, and it’s most likely the source of prosocial contagion.

And how do we promote elevation, which sounds like just what we need in our society right now? According to Nancy Davis Kho, it’s by developing an ongoing practice of gratitude.

“Research published in 2015 in Frontiers in Psychology found that an ongoing practice of gratitude basically rewires our brains to reward us for the positive perceptions we have of the people around us. That begets more gratitude and “elevation,” a lovely scientific term defined in a 2000 article by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt as “a warm or glowing feeling in the chest [that] makes people want to become morally better themselves.” Pour me some elevation, barkeep, and make it a double!”
The Thank-You Project by Nancy Davis Kho,

Learn to be Brave

Posted on June 11, 2025 by marylbrandt

“The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid – the right side of history will always expect you to be brave.”

JB Pritzker, Knox College Commencement Address, June 8, 2025

It is easy to be swept away by fear, to respond to fear with more fear (as well fear’s cousins anger, hatred, and anxiety). This is particularly true right now,when we are contantly confronted with messages of invasion, violence, and “others” who are trying to somehow hurt us. But it’s crucial to recognize that our response to these messages, the fear we are all feeling right now, is a normal, hard-wired, very primal response. When we become afraid, we move automatically – without conscious thought – into “flight, fight, or freeze” mode.

Fear as a response to threat is hard-wired because our response to what frightens us is protective, much like our immune system protects us from bacteria, viruses and other causes of disease. But, like the immune system, if our initial fearful response is not met with balancing forces to “turn down” the heat, fear can destroy us.

Fortunately, we can learn to be brave…

1. Realize that your fear is not the “truth”. Recognize it for what it is… an emotional response to a threat (perceived or real). Because it’s an emotion, it can be regulated (not as good as eliminated, but still very helpful). Joan Halifax’s technique which uses the mnemonic “GRACE” is a great place to start.

2. Welcome fear with a sense of gratitude. I know, this seems crazy. Everything in us wants to throw fear out the window, suppress it, rationalize it, compartmentalize it, transform it into anger… anything that makes it seem less threatening. But none of those techniques work. Like making you pull your hand away from a hot stove, your fear is there to protect you. This welcoming practice is a much better way to defuse the emotional impact of fear.

3. Don’t lose your moral compass. Fear of the other is weaponized and used in all societies, but it is rampant now. Don’t let that change your basic goodness, don’t let it force you into becoming someone you don’t want to become. Make sure you articulate and then follow your “true north”.

4. Choose courage. After all of this I have some bad news – You will still be afraid. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

And what are the things that are more important than fear in your life?

What makes up your “true north”?

It will vary a bit between us, but honesty, generosity, integrity, fairness, and compassion tend to be anchoring principles for a good life that are found in virtually all philosophies and faiths.

Choose honesty, generosity, integrity, fairness, and compassion… and then choose to act on them despite the fact that you are afraid.

I started this essay with a quote from JB Pritzker’s recent commencement address …. but there’s another recent quote (unattributed) that also blew me away. It seems a fitting book end to these thoughts…

If you can’t be brave, at least be kind.

If you are interested in reading more about learning to be brave:

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Fierce Love, by Jaqui Lewis

Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm by Thich Nhat Hanh

Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet by Joan Halifax

How We Learn to Be Brave by Marian Edgar Budde

Thank you!

Posted on November 28, 2024 by marylbrandt

We all stand on land celebrated and cared for by First People. What better day to learn more, listen more, and celebrate this sacred work?

Here’s where to start – Go to Native-Land.ca and enter your address to learn who the First People are where you live. Say a word of thanks for their presence, and then take the opportunity to learn a little more about them and their ancestors.

We all (and always) have things to be grateful for, and this day is one to spend in gratitude. But let’s also try to learn and maybe even teach our children a little more about why we celebrate this day in the United States.

One more note of gratitude…To all those who are on call today in hospitals or as first responders, thank you. We see you and are grateful.

“If the only prayer you say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart (c. 1230- c. 1328)

Delight!!!

Posted on January 4, 2024 by marylbrandt

For the last several days I’ve been using the practice described by Catherine Price in this New York Times article (and I’ve ordered The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, too!)

“The basic premise of a delight practice (which I learned about in the essay collection “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay) is simple: You make a point to notice things in your everyday life that delight you. This could be anything — a pretty flower, a smile you share with a stranger, the sight of a person playing a trumpet while riding a unicycle down a major Philadelphia thoroughfare (true story). Nothing is too small or absurd. Then whenever you notice something that delights you, you lift your arm, raise your index finger in the air and say, out loud and with enthusiasm, “Delight!” (Yes, even if you’re alone.) Ideally, you share your delights with another person.”

This is an embodied practice (because of the the motion of pointing up) and a practice that creates a “delight radar” as we begin to look for moments of delight during the day. Not surprisingly, as you notice more moments of delight, you feel grateful… and as your gratitude increases your life becomes lighter, happier, and more meaningful.

“This year, like all of them, will be filled with conflict and tragedy. But it will also be filled with delights. Resolve to notice them.”

p.s. I do limit myself to pointing up and just thinking “Delight!!!” if I’m in the middle of the grocery store 🙂

Do What’s Right

Posted on December 8, 2023 by marylbrandt

I have the extraordinary of gift of sitting with my father, Floyd Brandt, in hospice this week. His (beautiful) heart is failing, but his mind is still sharp, and his spirit is completely at peace. The following is his last lecture as a professor (to his graduate seminar in Business Ethics)

It gives me great joy to share it with you.

Retiring is a little like having your first child. There is nothing particularly unique about the exercise except it is a first time experience that requires no specific skills or expertise and arrives with an unknown outcome .

The initial inclination while preparing comments for a last class is to draw from all the literature and all of one’s experiences to craft some statement filled with lasting words capable of shaping the hearts and minds of students for their remaining years.

Shortly after entertaining such a prospect, it became immediately apparent that teaching has taught me that that while the words may be forthcoming, the impact is not likely to be so resounding. Given that reality, the best course of action is to make a few short comments and say good-bye.

The closing line from Stephen Sondheim’s song “Send in the Clowns” came to mind. “Isn’t it rich, isn’t it queer, losing my timing so late in my career.”

In these last few minutes of the last organized university class that I will teach, I would like to suggest to each of you:

Define what is important to you. Attempt to determine what you are worshiping, because without that understanding, you are adrift and likely to be pushed ever-which-way.

Come to terms with the finite and the infinite dimensions of your being. Until you come to terms with the end of your existence, you will find living in the present to be difficult.

Cultivate the disciplines necessary to contend with the vagaries of the world around you. Perhaps the most important are the disciplines of the mind and of the spirit. The first step is often that of finding a quiet place to meditate and contemplate.

Learn the significance of uncertainty, choosing, and evaluating and then celebrate them. The definition of who you are is largely a product of the questions you ask and the choices you make. It is difficult to learn that the choices made today are the offspring of choices made yesterday.

Experience the joy of thanksgiving. Recognize that joy and hope are rooted in faith in the belief that what you have and what you are is a gift. As much as possible expunge the demons of comparison and competition and accept that sweeping out the harpies circling round the “enthroned self” never ends.

But then how does one end a last class in ethics except to recall that ethics is obedience to the unenforceable; a product of what you ask of yourself and not what others ask of you.

And finally, do whatever is right.

Why I’m Thankful for #ThisIsOurLane

Posted on November 21, 2018 by marylbrandt

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so today I’m with my family, looking at the timeline for tomorrow and discussing when the pies need to go in, who is making the cornbread and calculating how long the turkey needs to cook.

As of today, there will be 12,996 families in the United States who lost a family member to gun violence in 2018…. almost 13,000 Thanksgiving tables with an empty seat from a preventable death – from this year alone.

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Late at night on November 7^th, the NRA posted this on Twitter:

I, and many other physicians responded as soon as we saw it…

My second tweet was followed by a long thread of PubMed abstracts with research results showing how we might start decreasing deaths from gun violence. The NRA, interestingly, removed all of those Tweets from their timeline.

#ThisIsOurLane has become a movement. A callous Tweet from the NRA started it, but that’s not what is sustaining it now. As I discussed in this podcast, I think what the NRA did was make physicians realize that this “debate” is not about politics, it’s about lives… human lives… sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, friends. It’s about our patients and, unfortunately, our colleagues. As a result of what has happened since November 7th, physicians have realized we need two things to move this forward: stories and data. Human beings are not swayed by debates, they are moved by stories. Good decisions can’t be made on emotions alone – we need data and that means research, and funds to do that research.

What you can do to help:

Support important groups working to address gun violence as the public health problem it is. Donate today to Affirm (American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine), Giffords, The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, The Brady Campaign, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
Commit to questioning what you hear – from both sides. Question whether the fear created by the NRA is to serve another, more political aim… one that you might not completely understand or agree with. Ask questions. Ask for data. Recognize and ignore political rhetoric (from both sides). Keep an open mind.
Support the funding of research into gun violence. Contact your representatives to let them know this a priority for you. This is no different than what we did as a society when we looked at death from car crashes… and developed seat belts, stronger cars frames and air bags. Wouldn’t it be great if we could see the same decrease in gun deaths through research?

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If you are in healthcare, tell the stories in a way that respects your patients and their rights… but tell them. If you are on social media, use that platform. Until people realize that these are our siblings, parents, colleagues, and not just statistics, we won’t make progress. We have to move hearts before we can move minds.

I am so thankful for my family, for the opportunity to gather at the Thanksgiving table together, and for the many friends and opportunities that have been given to me. My heart goes out to all families who have lost a loved one to gun violence, including the horrible loss of life by suicide. May you find some small solace in knowing that we are holding you in the light – and that we will continue to work hard to end the tragic epidemic of gun violence in our country.

Photo credit (and info on the new initiative to stop gun violence from Toms.com)

Resolve To Be Kind

Posted on December 31, 2017 by marylbrandt

I’m not a great fan of New Year’s Resolutions in general. Like all of you, I’ve made them and broken them more years than not. But that being said, I do think the new year is a time we should pause and take account of where we’ve been and where we want our journey to lead us. Or, put a different way, we can use the transition to a new year to think about who we are and who we want to become.

So instead of the usual resolutions to lose weight, drink more water, exercise, etc – here are three “resolutions” for medical students, residents and physicians that may be easier to keep this year. (If you aren’t in medicine, I think they still apply.)

Be kind.

Deliberately reset your intention to be kind with every encounter you have with patients or colleagues. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself, too.

Keep up with every day tasks so they don’t weigh you down.

Clean out your medical records, record your cases, prepare food for the next day… whatever it is that will free up time and emotional energy. Make a list of these tasks with check boxes and keep it on your phone so you can see it often. Clear the list every night to start over for the next day. Celebrate what you accomplished during the day and have self-compassion for the things you weren’t able to do.

Take care of yourself – physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Be deliberate in the choices you make to take care of yourself. Don’t get overwhelmed by the pressure of wanting to do it all. Know that some days will make it hard to exercise, eat right, be still, etc. That’s ok, but don’t give up. Make sure you do something for your own wellbeing every day.

The gift you give to others through your career is special – remind yourself often of the amazing work you do. Take measures to sustain your career so you can continue give to others and have joy doing it.

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I wish for you all a New Year filled with kindness, peace, and joy!

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Hope

Posted on December 26, 2017 by marylbrandt

After passing through this year’s holiday season at the end of what has seemed a particularly difficult year, I have a great sense of hope for the new year.

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In addition to our usual understanding of the word “hope”, it turns out that hope is also “a sloping plain between mountain ridges.” I love this definition…. so maybe hope is also the moments when our journey is a little easier between the times we are climbing?

I wish joyful hope for you in the coming year, mountains to climb for the right reasons, and sloping plains to ease your journey when you are tired. Happy New Year!

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Advice physicians should follow. But don’t.

Posted on November 8, 2016 by marylbrandt

This is a truly wonderful piece from Emily Gibson, re-posted here with her permission from her beautiful blog, Barnstorming. Enjoy!

As we drown in the overwhelm of modern day health care duties, most physicians I know, including myself, fail to follow their own advice. Far too many of us have become overly tired, irritable and resentful about our workload. It is difficult to look forward to the dawn of the next work day.

Medical journals and blogs label this as “physician burnout” but the reality is very few of us are so fried we want to abandon practicing medicine. Instead, we are weary of being distracted by irrelevant busy work from what we spent long years training to do: helping people get well, stay well and be well, and when the time comes, die well.

Instead, we are busy documenting-documenting-documenting for the benefit of insurance companies and to satisfy state and federal government regulations. Very little of this has anything to do with the well-being of the patient and only serves to lengthen our work days — interminably.

Today I decided to take a rare mid-week day off at home to consider the advice we physicians all know but don’t always allow ourselves to follow:

Sleep. Plenty. Weekend and days-off naps are not only permitted but required. It’s one thing you can’t delegate someone else to do for you. It’s restorative, and it’s necessary.

Don’t skip meals because you are too busy to chew. Ever. Especially if there is family involved.

Drink water throughout the work day.

Go to the bathroom when it is time to go and not four or even eight hours later.

Nurture the people (and other breathing beings) who love and care for you because you will need them when things get rough.

Exercise whenever possible. Take the stairs. Park on the far side of the lot. Dance on the way to the next exam room.

Believe in something more infinite than you are as you are absolutely finite and need to remember your limits.

Weep if you need to, even in front of others. Holding it in hurts more.

Time off is sacred. When not on call, don’t take calls except from family and friends. No exceptions.

Learn how to say no gracefully and gratefully — try “not now but maybe sometime in the future and thanks for thinking of me.”

Celebrate being unscheduled and unplanned when not scheduled and planned.

Get away. Far away. Whenever possible. The backyard counts.

Connect regularly with people and activities that have absolutely nothing to do with medicine and health care.

Cherish co-workers, mentors, coaches and teachers that can help you grow and refine your profession and your person.

Start your work day on time. End your work day a little before you think you ought to.

Smile at people who are not expecting it, especially your co-workers. Smile at people who you don’t think warrant it. If you can’t get your lips to smile, smile with your eyes.

Take a day off from caring for others to care for yourself. Even a hug from yourself counts as a hug.

Practice gratitude daily. Doctoring is the best work there is anywhere and be blessed by it even on the days you prefer to forget.

What Big Magic Can Teach Those Who Serve

Posted on April 18, 2016 by marylbrandt

“Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness.”*

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On the flight home yesterday I finished Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (She’s probably known to you for her NY Times Best Seller Eat, Pray, Love). For me, one of the overarching messages of her book was this – When you see what you do as your vocation (from Latin vocātiō, meaning “a call or summons”), and not just your job, it will transform how you view your work – a concept which I believe may be necessary (but not sufficient) to treat or prevent burnout.

As I read her thoughts on how to live a creative life, I realized that there were other ideas that applied to physicians, physicians in training and others who serve:

Just show up. Every day.

“Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done. Most of it is not fairy dust in the least”

Learning and practicing medicine (or any other field) means showing up – really showing up – every day. Everyone in the first year of medical school learns that it is different than college. Cramming for exams is not only ineffective, it’s just wrong. You are no longer studying for a grade on a test…. it’s now about the patients you will take care of in the future. The same holds true during residency and when you begin your practice. It’s not just when you are a trainee. Part of the “work” of medicine remains “unglamorous, disciplined labor”… keeping up with the literature, going to teaching conferences when you could be doing something else, finishing your hospital charts, being on call.

But the work of medicine is also about showing up every day in another sense, too – truly showing up for the people who rely on you – no matter what. That, too, can be “unglamorous, disciplined labor” when you are tired or stressed.

“Work with all your heart, because—I promise—if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.”

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“They are your patients… from the first day of medical school until you retire.

“Most of all, there is this truth: No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. Eventually, the teachers won’t be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you’ll be on your own. The hours that you will then put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you. The sooner and more passionately you get married to this idea—that it is ultimately entirely up to you—the better off you’ll be.”

Caring for others gives us joy but also gives us the responsibility to know the best thing to do for them. Whether you are a first year student, 3^rd year resident or a PGY35 attending, we are all still learning. “Life long learning” is not just a phrase, it’s the reality of what we do.

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It’s called the practice of medicine for a reason.

“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

Learn the art of deliberate practice early. Deliberate practice, to use a musical analogy I learned in Cal Newton’s fantastic book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, doesn’t mean playing the piece from start to finish 20 times in an hour. It means spending 55 minutes on the small section that you struggle with, repeating it 100 times before you play the piece through once. It means instead of reading the comfortable material on the anatomy of the kidney, you deliberately tackle how the nephron works. It means that instead of doing the computer-simulated cholecystectomy 10 times you spend an hour tying intracorporeal knots in the trainer. Find the thing that is not easy and practice it over and over until it becomes easy.

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There is Peril in Perfectionism

“There are only so many hours in a day, after all. There are only so many days in a year, only so many years in a life. You do what you can do, as competently as possible within a reasonable time frame, and then you let it go.”

One of the greatest attributes of those who care for others is their devotion to the people they serve. But perfectionism, taken to its extreme, is dangerous. Extending your time to study for Step 1 beyond what is reasonable to try to get a higher score, revisiting decisions about patient care to the point of anxiety, worrying that your GPA has to be perfect are all counterproductive. The motivation to do well is like a cardiac sarcomere – a little worry will make you more effective, but stretched too far, there won’t be any output at all.

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Curiosity can overcome fear.

“No, when I refer to “creative living,” I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”

It’s something most students don’t realize, but no matter how long you practice medicine, there are days when you are afraid. It takes courage to do what we do. Remember, being courageous is not an absence of fear, it’s being able to do what’s right despite the fear. I agree complete with Elizabeth Gilbert that curiosity helps. When you have something that doesn’t go the way you expect or frightens you, instead of beating yourself up (“I should have studied more”….”I could have made a different decision”…etc…etc) become curious. If you are thinking about a complication, commit to finding everything you can about the procedure and how to prevent complications. If you didn’t do as well on your test as you thought you should, look up different techniques to study, take notes, and remember information, and go back to make sure you really understood what was being tested.

Even more powerful than curiosity is gratitude. Fear and gratitude cannot exist at the same moment. Try it – the next time you are about to snap because your EMR freezes be grateful that you can see the computer, be grateful you have work, be grateful you have been trained to help other human beings …and see what happens.

“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

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Your worth is not the same as your “success”.

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Wow…. This one is so important.

It’s not what you make on Step 1. It’s not how many cases you do, how many patients you see or how much money you make. This concept is taught by every religion and philosopher I know – for a reason. Be devoted to doing the best you can and to forgiving yourself (and learning from it) when you fall short.

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One last thing….for medical students trying to choose a specialty – forget about finding your passion.

This is a little longer quote than the others, and mirrors a similar message in So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love .

Find something, even a little tiny thing, that makes you curious (or fills you with wonder) and follow it. Dedicate yourself to following that curiosity and it will likely lead you to your career.

“May I also urge you to forget about passion? Perhaps you are surprised to hear this from me, but I am somewhat against passion. Or at least, I am against the preaching of passion. I don’t believe in telling people, “All you need to do is to follow your passion, and everything will be fine.” I think this can be an unhelpful and even cruel suggestion at times. First of all, it can be an unnecessary piece of advice, because if someone has a clear passion, odds are they’re already following it and they don’t need anyone to tell them to pursue it…..I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone…..In fact, curiosity only ever asks one simple question: “Is there anything you’re interested in?” Anything? Even a tiny bit? No matter how mundane or small?….But in that moment, if you can pause and identify even one tiny speck of interest in something, then curiosity will ask you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look at the thing a wee bit closer. Do it. It’s a clue. It might seem like nothing, but it’s a clue. Follow that clue. Trust it. See where curiosity will lead you next. Then follow the next clue, and the next, and the next. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a voice in the desert; it’s just a harmless little scavenger hunt. Following that scavenger hunt of curiosity can lead you to amazing, unexpected places. It may even eventually lead you to your passion—albeit through a strange, untraceable passageway of back alleys, underground caves, and secret doors.

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