Mortality
Recently read a book I really liked called “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande. Atul came from a family of doctors and specializes in end of life care for patients. He talks about what matters to people in the end when they are staring death in the eye. He discovered one of the most important things for many people in the end is their autonomy — the freedom to be the authors of our lives, shaping our own life based on our character, convictions and preferences.
While reading the book, it helped me gain a new perspective of my grandparent’s weird behavior in their last days. After college in the U.S, I moved back to Taiwan to be closer to my family since my grandparents were in their 90s. We found the best assisted living residence for them to live at, where they had 24/7 medical professionals on site, are surrounded by people they could relate to and had a church community. It also had great amenities such as ping pong, karaoke, art classes — which they loved and enjoyed everyday. We would visit them every weekend and have fun doing all these activities with them, everything was great. But as they got older, the stranger their behavior became.
In the end, my grandpa insisted on moving out of the assisted living residence into a new apartment. Even though it was less safe, as they didn’t have medical professionals around the clock, a lot more inconvenient for everyone to visit, more expensive as we had to hire people around the clock to care for them. We of course gave him what he wanted, but it worried and puzzled us on why he was acting that way. Now looking back I understood perhaps what he wanted was his autonomy — the freedom to be the authors of his life, even in the end.
After reading the book and reflecting on my grandparents, I wondered why we have to wait til the end to realize the importance of our autonomy, why can’t we apply these great lessons we learned to our lives now? It reminded me of a quote I really like from the book “The Power of Now” by Eckart Tolle “Death is the stripping away of all that is not you, the secret to life is, to die before you die, to learn how to live.” “Death is the stripping away of all that is not you” means that as we face mortality we start caring about different things, rather than materialistic things, we may care more about relationships, quality time we get to spend with people and the quality of our lives. When we face mortality, what’s not part of our being gets stripped away to reveal the things that are truly important to us. To “Die before you die” of course does not mean to literally die, but to use mortality as a friend, a guide to show us what’s truly important to us and use that to learn how to live.
One way to die before you die is the method I learned from the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey called “beginning with the end in mind” — Visualize going to a funeral of someone you’re close with, you will hear the eulogies from their spouse, children, friend and colleague, you walk up to the casket, and you see yourself, this is your own funeral, what do you imagine those people will say about you? what do you want them to think about you as a person and the things you’ve done? “die before you die to learn how to live” means to understand what will matter the most to you in the end and live accordingly.
I had a personal experience facing mortality when i was in 3rd grade in Taiwan. I had some pain in my bones and went to see the doctor, turns out I had a tumor in my bone, went through surgery to get it removed, but the doctor said it was cancer. I vividly remember that very quiet car ride home, my family and I talking about it in the living room. We were all crying, and we decided that no matter what happened, how much time we had, we would make the most out of the circumstances, stay as positive as we could and cherish every moment we had. My parents didn’t give up and took the samples to other doctors, which some disagreed with the diagnosis, we didn’t know what to do and had to keep following up, but me being alive and well proves that it was indeed benign tumor, not cancer.
I was lucky to have seemingly face mortality and escape with a different perspective, new found appreciation for life and in a general, a more positive mindset. What I learned from that is perhaps instead of fearing death, we should try to make mortality our friend. Let it guide us on what is most important to us in our lives. And not wait til the end to use our autonomy to make sure we live accordingly. Make mortality your friend, die before you die, to learn how to live.
