I bet you have it too. Promises we dare utter so as to pass the board exam or have a love fulfilled. It's human nature that when face with an insurmountable task, we retreat and pray with our most frail gestures to the God of small things.

And so it was with great humility that I bowed my head and prayed. Promised that I would visit their graves. Honor the past, honor God if they would help me pass the board exam which I did, thankfully.

Of course, if I failed, it would have been another story. Curses would have been hurled. But I did not. And looking back, knowing the stress of studying for the medicine board exams, those prayers actually gave me the confidence to do the seemingly insurmountable.

So dedicate again this ode. For the new year and the years ahead. My simple thank you, to the great spirit of my ancestors, and least I forget, to the God of small things, for helping me, no, for making me a healer of sorts.

It will probably take me a lifetime to understand where this path will lead me but all I need to know, all I ever needed to know, is that this is the one for me.