Oliver Sacks, Gratitude
“I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect.
This is a kind of afterword to his great memoir, On The Move. It’s a very short collection of four essays he wrote before his death at 82. I read all of them before when they ran in the New York Times: “Mercury,” “My Own Life,” “My Periodic Table,” “Sabbath,” but it’s cool to have them all in one little book.
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.
On his sense of perspective changing:
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.
Having no time for “anything inessential”:
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 the NewsHour every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
Our individuality:
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.
There are four or five beautiful photographs by Bill Hayes in the book — I recommend popping over to his website for more.
Recommended. (Along with On The Move.)
Filed under: my reading year 2016
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