Eric Loo
I visited a friend who was being treated for a rare form of ear cancer. “What will you do when you fully recover from your radiotherapy?” I asked. He replied: “Slow morning walks in the park with my wife, and just cherish the moments together.”
My friend will fill each day with a joy that does not hunger for more, but rests satisfied with what life has given them in their 50 years of marriage. Another day is a bonus. They will live in the present and not dwell on the inevitable.
Yes, it’s adding more life to their remaining time, getting busy living in spite of imminent death shadowing their days, just as Paul Kalanithi wrote in When Breath Becomes Air.
Dr Kalanithi died at age 37 of lung cancer in 2015, just after completing his training as a neurosurgeon at Stanford, California. I read his poignant short autobiography with recollection of the weeks I spent with my brother who died from pancreatic cancer in March.
The meaning of life is not being dead - that was my brother’s take on the stark reality of death, having treated many cancer patients himself in his practice. Because we live, life matters regardless. It matters how we live our life, examined and reflected, as my brother did over six deteriorating months.
While we all die eventually, our sense of meaning and purpose in life varies. To the god-centered, aspirations in life, devoid of a personal relationship with God, are pretty meaningless. All pursuits and vanities once predominant, are now trivial, “meaningless, a chasing after the wind” as the skeptical Teacher said in Ecclesiastes.
Photo from Malaysiakini, used with permission
There are as many cliched emotional well-being books in the market as there are of subjectivist (life is as meaningful as how we value it in our mind, which is subject to change) and objectivist explanation (the reality of life is what it is, that all knowledge about life and the cosmos is achieved through reasons and knowledge, not emotions) on how we can endow our life with deeper meaning and purpose.
The common thread weaving through the self-help literature is this: work towards set goals. It underlines our sense of hope and a ‘calling’ to help others that keeps us moving forward. And if despondency knocks, and the ‘calling’ eludes, we need to change our state of mind, our perception and attitude.
As the Stoics in centuries past had taught, one way to live and die well is to learn what is within our power to change and accept what is not. Which foreshadowed the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer of serene acceptance with what life throws at us: “Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Niebuhr’s prayer of serenity captured what Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy had taught - that is, we can find meaning in every aspect of our life, even in suffering. And, I might add, spending time with our loved ones on their final journey.
Yes, finding a modicum of meaning even as one endures the pain and holds back the tears from spending the final days, weeks and months with a dying loved one.
As Dr Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy, wrote in the Epilogue, “Relying on his own strength and the support of his family and community, Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace – not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would ‘overcome’ or ‘beat’ cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one …”
“Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for the days that were full of purpose and meaning.”
But, what do we make of those who seemed to have it all but lost a sense of purpose, and took their own lives while others could only yearn for more time to fulfil their ‘calling’?
Reading the tragic testimonies of individuals who could have made much difference to other people’s lives but died young, such as Paul Kalinithi and my brother, I do wonder – as we come to the end of another year - what I have made of my life thus far, and what I can do to serve so that the conditions of our loved ones, and of others, will be much better tomorrow.
Yuval Noah Harari wrote in Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind (2014) that while the “objective conditions” of wealth, health, fame, relationships and achievable goals may make one happy, and feel good. But they do not necessarily make life more meaningful because we often fall victims to our “subjective expectations” and desires for more.
When subjective expectations exceed the objective conditions, it usually leads to unceasing discontent, disappointments, and in some cases, the taking of one’s life. It does come down to finding that balance in life with days that are “full of purpose and meaning”.
This article was first published in Malaysiakini on December 6, 2019