When a patient receives a terminal diagnosis, a clock starts.
In an instant, the future becomes finite. Doctors do their best to predict life expectancy based on median survival, the period of time after diagnosis when half of patients with the disease are still alive.
But statistics can't tell you if you'll host Thanksgiving dinner...
..or attend your grandkids' recital.
February is a suitable month for dying.
the winter hateful, hanging on too long
Even though February was the shortest month of the year,
sometimes it seemed like the longest
I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year.
In the winter I would choose February
The reason that God
made February short a few days
was because he knew
that by the time people came to the end of it
they would die if they had to stand
one more blasted day
When we die,
as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt
— we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants.
Then we are ghosts, then we are myths.
But still we are together.
We are the past together, we are a distant past.
Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars,
I still hear your voice.
There's difference between being dead and dying.
We're all dying.
Some of us die for ninety years,
and some of us die for nineteen.
But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death.
Everyone.
So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing,
if you think about it
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds,
how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
die with dignity.
There’s no such thing.
Our bodies break down, sometimes when we’re ninety, sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens and there’s never any dignity in it.
I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass, its always ugly.
Always!
You can live with dignity, you can’t die with it.
Death is not about the disposal of the client.
The amazing miracle of death,
when one second you're walking and talking,
and the next second you're an object.
Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things.
We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest.
The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium.
When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely;
if it passes you by don't try pulling it back.
And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes.
Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods.
Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company.
That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.
It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin,
but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices.
He always has hope.
He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure.
Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.
I made a rule about you
called the snow moon — a nickname inspired by the heavy snowfall typically seen in February in parts of the United States,
The full moon offers an opportunity to sit in the fullness of your life. It is a time to feel deep gratitude for the many blessings you have and experience. It is also a powerful time to recommit yourself to the projects and relationships that mean the most to you.
Names for this month’s Moon have historically had a connection to animals. The Cree traditionally called this the Bald Eagle Moon or Eagle Moon. The Ojibwe Bear Moon and Tlingit Black Bear Moon refer to the time when bear cubs are born. The Dakota also call this the Raccoon Moon; certain Algonquin peoples named it the Groundhog Moon, and the Haida named it Goose Moon.
Another theme of this month’s Moon names is scarcity. The Cherokee names of Month of the Bony Moon and Hungry Moon give evidence to the fact that food was hard to come by at this time
If only life's variables were as cut and dried as the rules of mathematics.
If only there were clear answers, certainty, clarity, right or wrong.
But all you can do is eliminate as many unknowns as possible.
Then pick an answer and hope.
Hope that at the end of the day, it's an answer you can live with.
On average, a healthy heart beats 115,000 times per day.
When excited, the heart rate can double.
The heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through your entire body 24 hours a day.
It never rests.
The heart is the hardest-working muscle in your body.
But when it’s damaged, it’s just like skin. It scars, and scar tissue can be very dangerous in a heart. It weakens it. And eventually, a heart full of scars stops working.
Scarred hearts don’t heal, but over time, the scars can change.
They can become smoother, softer.
And some scars can even fade away.
Life doesn't owe us a thing.
It just is.
Like a river, it goes where it goes.
You can try to fight against the current. Or you can learn to ride it.
All day, every day, we fight against the current.
Sometimes we lose, sometimes we win.
Sometimes, the current carries us exactly where we need to go
. And sometimes, it slams us right into the rocks.
24 hours.
1,440 minutes.
86,400 seconds.
One day can bring you back from the brink, change your entire life in one heartbeat, one single breath.
That's all it takes to save your life. To change your life.
One single day can pull us from the depths of despair.
And one single day can fill us with more possibilities than we could imagine.
Have you ever had the starring role in a play?
A solo in a recital? All eyes on you. Waiting for you to do what they came to see. Feeling the incredible pressure to perform.
There was a time when they used to call operating rooms an operating theater. Scores of people get ready for the show, the sets are arranged, there are costumes, masks, props, everything has to be rehearsed, choreographed, all leading to the moment when the curtain goes up.
You know what they say about Carnegie Hall? There is only one way to get there.
If only life was just a dress rehearsal... And we had time for do-overs... We'd be able to practice and practice every moment until we got it right.
Unfortunately, every day of our lives is its own performance.
It seems like even when we get the chance to rehearse and prepare and practice, we're still never quite ready for life's grand moments.
The human body is designed to compensate for loss.
It adapts, so it no longer needs the thing it can't have.
But sometimes the loss is too great, and the body can't compensate on its own.
They say the inability to accept loss is a form of insanity, it's probably true.
But sometimes, it's the only way to stay alive.
Carpe diem.
How annoying is carpe diem?
How are you supposed to plan a life, a career, a family, if you're always carpe-ing the diem?
We'd all be too busy, living in the now. Whatever that means.
I'll admit, the Romans had a point. You gotta live life. And living means that every morning, when you wake up, you have to choose.
It means seizing what life offers in the moment and forging ahead, no matter the weather
... or closing the curtains, and shutting out the day.
Turbulence.
It means anything from a few little bumps to a catastrophic weather system that could knock your flying tin can right out of the air.
We've hit a snag, a bump in the road.
Turbulence. So, you know, you better buckle up.
One of the most unpredictable things about encountering turbulence is its aftermath.
Everything's been shaken up. Undone. Turned on its head.
So, if you have the choice to avoid the plane crash, do you take it? Do you play it safe?
Or do you get on board and take your chances?
Just like we need food and water, humans need each other.
A brain study revealed that when placed in an MRI, a patient's reward center lit up when another person sat in the room.
Neurons fire when we talk to someone, think about someone, and they go haywire when we hold someone's hand. Our brains and bodies are actually programmed to seek each other out and connect.
So then why do so many people prefer being alone? Why do we often run for the hills when we feel the slightest connection? Why do we feel compelled to fight what we're hardwired to do?
Maybe it's because when we find someone or something to hold onto, that feeling becomes like air. And we're terrified we're going to lose it. And trust me, you can get pretty good at the alone thing.
But most things are better when they're shared with someone else.
In Japan, when a piece of pottery breaks, some potters fill the cracks with gold.
The potters, they see the repair as something beautiful. They know that the unexpected happens. Change happens. They know that nobody gets through this world in one piece.
That doesn’t have to diminish us. The cracks are part of our history. They will always be with us. They made us better. They made us stronger.
They made us something new.
Time is a strange thing.
When you're waiting for something good to happen, it can feel like time is dragging on.
But when you want it to slow down, it goes by in the blink of an eye.
The odd part is time isn't real. It's a concept imagined by scientists based on the imperfect movement of the Earth around the Sun.
So why do we put so much importance on something that's just a theory?
Because it's all we have.
There's never enough time. Work. Kids. Life. Death. Something always cuts our time short.
So our best bet is to make the most of the time we have. Or make up for lost time.
But sometimes, if we're really lucky, time stands still.
Before the advent of surgery, many illnesses were treated with phlebotomy, also known as bloodletting.
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease.
It was one of the most common medical practices performed by surgeons from ancient Greece until the late 19th century.
The practice has largely been abandoned because we now know that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the use of bloodletting is harmful to patients.
And yet, we did it as a standard medical practice for over 2,000 years.
It wasn't a blip in the history of medicine. It was an era.
For decades, many doctors were convinced that bloodletting was harming more than it helped. But just as many were convinced that it was the only cure.
Doctors, like most human beings, are risk-averse. They prefer the safety of what they know over the thrill of new innovations.
change requires incontrovertible proof, which is not always easy to come by.
It has been theorized that surgery itself is just an era that will pass. But that's a long way away.
And in the meantime, there are eras within eras.
We discover new science, we posit, prove new theories. And then we bang our heads against the wall trying to convince ourselves to actually change our practices in line with what we know.
Because the end of an era is easier said than done.
