My Own Life
Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
By OLIVER SACKSFEB.
A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even
robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a
few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine
years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular
melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately
left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize.
I am among the unlucky 2 percent.
I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of
good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to
face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its
advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.
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. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite
philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age
65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it
“My Own Life.”
“I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution,” he wrote. “I
have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange,
have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s
abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the
same gaiety in company.”
I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15
years allotted to me beyond Hume’s three score and five have been equally rich
in work and love. In that time, I have published five books and completed an
autobiography (rather longer than Hume’s few pages) to be published this
spring; I have several other books nearly finished.
Hume continued, “I am ... a man of mild dispositions,
of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of
attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my
passions.”
Here I depart from Hume. While I have enjoyed loving
relationships and friendships and have no real enmities, I cannot say (nor
would anyone who knows me say) that I am a man of mild dispositions. On the
contrary, I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and
extreme immoderation in all my passions.
And yet, one line from Hume’s essay strikes me as
especially true: “It is difficult,” he wrote, “to be more detached from life
than I am at present.”
Over the last few days, I have been able to see my
life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening
sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with
life.
On the contrary, 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.
This will involve audacity, clarity and plain
speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be
time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).
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.
This is not indifference but detachment — I still care
deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality,
but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when
I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my
metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.
I have been
increasingly conscious, for the last 10
years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. 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 traveled 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.
Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology at the New York University S
59 comentários:
Desculpem, mas não sei como se traduz decentemente na Net. E o homem merece muito respeito pela vida que tem vivido. Abraço a todos.
Hummm...eu já li isto traduzido - bem traduzido - em algum lugar.
De uma forma geral concordo com Oliver Sacks. Mesmo sem o peso da sua importância (a importância de cada um é neste caso a mesma, o que fizemos do que nos deram, quanto amámos e como...). E teve a sorte de viver até aos 81, ainda que cabendo nos 2% de azarados com as metástases. Pergunto-me se teria sido tão prolífico nos últimos anos caso o problema visual não surgisse. Mas se, não é resposta.
A resposta é sempre igual: é uma sorte ter nascido, não ter morrido na infância, ter sentido o amor nos dois sentidos e outras mais coisas que existem e pelas quais nos deixámos afectar por ser isso viver. E estar consciente de. Não ter nascido mosca, ou elefante, é muita sorte.
Sem palavras perante este grande Homem!
Senti-me pequenina...e comovoida também. Muito.
"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."
Penso que o entendo plenamente.
Que força e que visão da vida a deste homem.
Obrigada, Júlio, por a trazer para aqui.
Comovida, caraças! Só gralhas...
O trabalho que me dá, professor...:)
Ler isto tudo é obra!
Lições de vida partilhadas.
Passamos muito depressa pela vida e às vezes esquecemos de viver.
Tenho tentado inverter essa tendência.
Li de novo. Empolgante, comovente, tudo ao mesmo tempo.
Grande homem, repito!
"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."
Admirável!
Quando referi em cima no outro excerto que citei que o entendo plenamente isso tem muito a ver com o facto de eu própria me ver cada vez mais a pensar assim.
Sou mais nova, não tenho cancro, pelo menos que eu saiba, e no entanto tendo cada vez mais a focar-me em mim, no meu trabalho, na minha família, nos meus amigos, nos meus objectivos para a reforma. Para mim isso também é o essencial.
Podem chamar-me egoísta, podem chamar-me o que quiserem. Não me importo. Eu é que decido como viver a minha vida. Não me esqueço dos imensos problemas que existem no mundo mas eles não vão fazer com que eu pare de viver
Por isso o entendo na perfeição!
Fiquem bem:)
Mourinho Eondoic E Ronaldo
Para quem está de fora do problema ter conhecimento de casos assim é um conforto: afinal de contas... porque não havemos nós de ser como ele? Chega a parecer desafiante... Um engodo romantizado como as modernas tendências de coaching...
Mind The Gap In Moment Like The Mittor Is Pain As Banana At The End
Comentário sábio Cê- Tê, enquanto os outros vão tendo orgasmos de tanto êxtase.
Mirror é com "R": (Mittor)
Um Cartão Muito Peculiar Para Reunir Os/As Camaradas/Os
Deus Escreve Certo Por Linhas Tortas:http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/politica/cartaz-jsd/cartaz-da-jsd-falha-alvo-e-compara-governo-de-passos-e-portas-ao-nazismo
Estavam A Tratar Por Fora
Ele A Tratar-se Por Dentro
Júlio Machado Vaz,
Puxa Muito De Cor Para Saber Alguma Coisa
Condolências
"Ensaio Sobre A Cegueira"
http://noticias.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/efe/2016/06/12/papa-denuncia-exploracao-infantil-e-pede-erradicacao.htm
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Traduzido Do Latim É Que Nem Na Net
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Desconhecendo A Origem
O Inglês Está Perfeito
Como Se Falado
Gralhas Assim
É Cultura
Muitas Vezes Não É Pelo Racional Que Se Quebra Mas Pelo Irracinal Que Já Não Aguenta
ENCUBRAM-SE
Do Not Play With Focus Light Experience https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728098/
C´est Chick: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23305919
I Do Not Pay This Ignorance
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bolshevized#English
Russian, from bolʹshe ‘greater’ (with reference to the greater faction).
Well Come To The Diversity
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%B5
From Bad To Worst: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002174/
Conductors We Should Never See
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_zQZrdXA4g
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral
_ https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_Freitas_do_Amaral
Who Get The Work . Have The Word . Your Blind Minister
´Costa "apanhado de surpresa" com declarações de César sobre Sócrates`
University´s
Ask To The Small Bottle How Much Glasse E Left
“Folha, tivemos de digerir muita coisa’
Lectures I Prefer To Let You Read
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3061004/
http://www.jornalmedico.pt/atualidade/35342-manual-da-dgs-aconselha-consumo-de-potassio-atraves-da-alimentacao.html
"Le Corbusier" Syndrome
*Britânicos irritados com sátira de Herman a David Attenborough
Em profundidade Correio da Manhã Há 19 h*
IS THE SAME AS TO READ CONFLICT ZONES
Contraceptive Father In Law
*Conceição e a sua estabilidade emocional: "Por vezes cria-se rótulos que são enganadores"
Sapo Desporto Há 4 h*
IS A SACRIFICE TO GROW UP IN THE NAME OF THE OTHERS
Associação de Rita Ferro Rodrigues recebe 73 mil euros para falar ...
Just To Confuse The Readers When One Have All Facilities While A Legion Strive For A Cigarrete
https://www.jn.pt/nacional/interior/amp/livro-sobre-salazar-revela-que-ditador-era-injetado-com-frequencia-10155077.html
You Can Even Mix With Tobacco
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182734/
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If It Was Nominal Data I Still Believe In A Good Working But As Digital Data Is All For Entertainment
Roll 1 PRESIDENTE DO FCP CONSTITUÍDO ARGUIDO EM E-MAIL’s
Roll 2 TREINADOR DO BENFICA EXPLICA SITUAÇÃO ACTUAL COMPARANDO COM NOTÍCIAS DE JORNAL
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With Sober Variaty
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4390982/
HOW MUCH THEY FIGHT HOW MUCH THEY INCREASE WHEN TO IGNORE IS NOT POLITIC OF NEO DEMOCRATS
https://observador.pt/2018/11/10/em-berlim-costa-apelou-a-mobilizacao-contra-populismo-xenofobia-protecionismo-e-extremismos/amp/
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Are Danger Cross Lines But Must To Be Done To Clear Water As Any Other Idioma All Depends Of External
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC61433/
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Worst Than A Better Future Is The Ilusion Of A Better Life While Nothing Is Done To Prevent The Next Generation
On Feet https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3130425/
Dreaming World https://pplware.sapo.pt/ciencia/pela-primeira-vez-cientistas-transformaram-celulas-estaminais-em-celulas-produtoras-de-insulina/
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Take In Reference The Open Fields
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
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