Status Updates From Being Mortal: Medicine and ...

“asking for chapatis, rice, curried string beans, potatoes, yellow split-pea dahl, black-eyed-pea chutney, and shira, a sweet dish from his youth. He talked to his grandchildren by phone. He sorted photos. He gave instructions about unfinished projects. He had but the tiniest fragments of life left that he could grab, and we were agonizing over them. Could we get him another one?”
I can’t stop crying

I am leery of suggesting the idea that endings are controllable.
No one ever really has control. Physics and biology and accident ultimately have their way in our lives. But the point is that we are not helpless either. Courage is the strength to recognize both realities.

I’m crying again

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all of its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.”

The brain gives us two ways to evaluate experiences like suffering there is how we apprehend such experiences in the moment and how we look at them afterward—and the two ways are deeply contradictory.

“We witnessed for ourselves the consequences of living for the best possible day today instead of sacrificing time now for time later.“

The choices don’t stop, however. Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.