Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine and the author of many books, has a beautifully written op-ed in the NYT where he reflects on his own mortality and the fact that at 81 he is faced with terminal cancer and a few months left to live. Some excerpts:
"I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday February 20 2015, @08:25PM
As an older person, I'm glad you got it when young. Maybe you're still young enough to do something. Don't be cynical about things you want/need. Be very skeptical (even to the point of cynicism) about things that others say you want/need. Now go do.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday February 23 2015, @05:27AM
Never to old to do something.
Though I don't expect I will do anything aside from voting and advocating.
Moderate protesters tend to not be terribly effective. Taking a grand stand for reason doesn't work well either.
The worst part is, most of the people I know are somewhere in the middle. I still don't understand why politics are so polarizing when most people are right in the middle.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh