The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all.
So Pabrai added the following checkpoint to his list: when analysing a company, stop and confirm that you’ve asked yourself whether the revenues might be overstated or understated due to boom or bust conditions.
People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish their legacies, make peace with God, and ensure that those who are left behind will be okay.
He also found he made mistakes in handling complexity. A good decision requires looking at so many different features of companies in so many ways that, even without the cocaine brain, he was missing obvious patterns. His mental checklist wasn’t good enough. “I am not Warren,” he said. “I don’t have a 300 IQ.” He needed an approach that could work for someone with an ordinary IQ. So he devised a written checklist.
Loyalty, said Royce, “solves the paradox of our ordinary existence by showing us outside of ourselves the cause which is to be served, and inside of ourselves the will which delights to do this service, and which is not thwarted but enriched and expressed in such service.
Assisted living is far harder than assisted death, but its possibilities are far greater, as well.
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.
Whenever the elderly have had the financial means, they have chosen what social scientists have called “intimacy at a distance.” Whereas in early-twentieth-century America 60 percent of those over age sixty-five resided with a child, by the 1960s the proportion had dropped to 25 percent. By 1975 it was below 15 percent. The pattern is a worldwide one.
We are a species that evolved to survive starvation, not resist abundance.
We stop the healthy from committing suicide because we recognize that their psychic suffering is often temporary. We believe that, with help, the remembering self will later see matters differently than the experiencing self – and indeed only a minority of people saved from suicide make a repeated attempt; the vast majority eventually report being glad to be alive. But for the terminally ill who face suffering that we know will increase, only the stonehearted can be unsympathetic.
Arriving at an acceptance of one’s mortality and a clear understanding of the limits and the possibilities of medicine is a process, not an epiphany.
Their attitude seemed to result from incomprehension rather than cruelty, but as Tolstoy would have said, what’s the difference in the end?
As you get older, the lordosis of your spine tips your head forward,” he said to me. “So when you look straight ahead it’s like looking up at the ceiling for anyone else. Try to swallow while looking up: you’ll choke once in a while. The problem is common in the elderly. Listen.” I realized that I could hear someone in the dining room choking on his food every minute or so.
Endings matter, not just for the person but, perhaps even more, for the ones left behind.
Effort does matter; diligence and attention to the minutest details can save you.
The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. If you don’t, mortality is only a horror. But if you do, it is not.
Your chances of avoiding the nursing home are directly related to the number of children you have, and, according to what little research has been done, having at least one daughter seems to be crucial to the amount of help you will receive.
Courage, Laches responds, “is a certain endurance of the soul.
You want people to make sure to get the stupid stuff right. Yet you also want to leave room for craft and judgment and the ability to respond to unexpected difficulties that arise along the way.
Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength. 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 is 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.
I never expected that among the most meaningful experiences I’d have as a doctor – and, really, as a human being – would come from helping others deal with what medicine cannot do as well as what it can. But it’s proved true, whether with a patient like Jewel Douglass, a friend like Peg Bachelder, or someone I loved as much as my father.