讀後感 Being Mortal 最後的告別

It is an interesting read, well researched and written, yet can be depressing, especially learning about how our bodies start the aging process when we are still so young!

With both of my parents landed in the hospital earlier this year and the progress of my dad’s advanced Parkinson disease, I decided to read this book to equip myself mentally to take care of them and make final decisions on their behalf when it’s the time. Yes, depressing, isn’t it! From this perspective, this is a very moving and sensitively written book on a subject that many of us avoid thinking or discussing until it’s too late.

As I have realized that one day my closest parents whom I can trust the most and always depend on will be leaving me, either through a painfully prolonged process, willingly or unwillingly; or through a sudden event. I will be the witness to walk them through this last stage of their life.  Not like every time when I thought about it, I would burst into tears. I read the book with calm and peace.

The book talks about several patients with whom the author worked during their struggles with ultimately incurable diseases and at the last stage of their lives. The author also shared his dad’s experience when he found out that he had cancer which impacts his ability as a surgeon. He witnessed, both as a doctor and son, the unexpected transformation of his dad’s career and life.

There are different magnitudes that we can focus on to improve the quality for aging seniors, from social and health care systems, from families and professionals support, from lifestyle changing and having conversation with seniors to understand what they want and need and thinking of all these in advance before certain circumstances happen. It is about knowing your priorities and planning the treatments for them. People are always worrying about doing too little,  equally terrible mistakes are possible in the other direction, that doing too much could be no less devastating to a person’s life.

According to the book, at least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality, the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage was difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink from it. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage, the courage to act on the truth we find. The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do.  The fear is not the death itself, it’s the process towards it.

By reading the book, it actually made me think about what I want the most in life and how I want to spend the rest of my life. Maybe too early or too late to think about? I do notice I feel less ambitious and come less interested in the rewards of achieving and accumulating, and more interested in the rewards of simple being. As the book said, when you are young and healthy, you believe you will live forever. You do not worry about losing any of your capabilities. People tell you “ the sky's the limit” and you are willing to delay gratification to invest years, for example, in gaining skills and resources for a brighter future. You seek to plug into bigger streams of knowledge and information. You widen your networks of friends and connections, instead of hanging out with your family. When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all that stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid- achievement, creativity and other attributes of “self-actualization” but as your horizon contract – when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain – your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and people closest to you. This is so true!

As the book says, you may not control life’s circumstances, but getting to be the author of our life means getting to control what you do with them.

We always say that the importance in life is not how long you can live, it’s more about the breadth and depth of life. Life is meaningful because it is a story. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. Your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also know the story works out as a whole.  By the end of the day, we shall feel happy of what we have experienced and proud of all the days we have lived through, some were with tears, but most were with smiles.