#THE FUTURE WILL NEVER BE PERFECT BUT THE WORK OF HOLDING BACK THE CEASELESS TIDE OF ENTROPY IS OURS AND IT IS HARD AND SCARY AND WORTH IT

[mankillercalledbunny]

The future will not be a heavenly hacienda, but here on this bruised earth, in the face of an inevitable entropic ending, bodies will carry on (for the time being at least) the incomplete (uncompleteable) work of keeping entropy at bay. Such activity is neither to be condemned nor condoned: not here, not in the work. It is repetitive work—some of it delegated to tools, some of it carried out by human agents—and it is uneven, sometime monstrously catastrophic, in its effects. But it is all we have got.

Ben Highmore, "Memories of Catastrophes Yet to Come: New Brutalism and Thing-Memory" in Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture (edited by Liedeke Plate, and Anneke Smelik)

I have never been knocked flat on my back by the close of an academic text like this one. Wow. Holy shit.

[theappletreee]

I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

One of my (current) favourite quotes: “I can’t go on, I thought, and immediately, its antiphon responded, completing Samuel Beckett’s seven words, words I had learned long ago as an undergraduate: I’ll go on. I got out of bed and took a step forward, repeating the phrase over and over: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

Just finished Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air” and what can I say? One of the best reads I’ve had in a while: teared a few times while reading this (very short) autobiography. I cannot even begin to understand fully what Kalanithi must have been through, and yet, I find myself drawn into this simple narrative, touched beyond measure. 

Some quotes that resonated with me (and because I cannot match Kalanithi in terms of eloquence hehe, I’ll let the original text do the talking): 

On duty:

“Moral duty has weight, things that have weight have gravity.”

“The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.”

“People often ask if it is a calling, and my answer is always yes. You can’t see it as a job, because if it’s a job, it’s one of the worst jobs there is.”

On the power of words: 

“What kind of life exists without language?”

“When there is no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon’s only tool.”

“Words began to feel as weightless as the breath that carried them.”

“At home in bed a few weeks before he died, I asked him, “Can you breathe okay with my head on your chest like this?” His answer was “It’s the only way I know how to breathe.” [ And this line really broke my heart sob :( ]

On empathy: 

“But in residency, something else was gradually unfolding. In the midst of this endless barrage of head injuries, I began to suspect that being so close to the fiery light of such moments only blinded me to their nature, like trying to learn astronomy by staring directly at the sun. I was not yet with patients in their pivotal moments, I was merely at those pivotal moments. I observed a lot of suffering; worse, I became inured to it. Drowning, even in blood, one adapts, learns to float, to swim, even to enjoy life, bonding with the nurses, doctors, and others who are clinging to the same raft, caught in the same tide.”

On striving: 

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”

“Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.”

“Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.”

In many ways, the past two weeks feels (literally) like slumber: a long and restful sleep after a long and hard day. Me, preferring blissful oblivion and the safety of dreams over the (darker, weightier) thoughts that plague my mind.  In part, an attempt at denial: I’m running away - from the long and arduous road that lies ahead. 

(They say graduation takes you to a sort of existential crossroads, but in my case there is no crossroad? Only a single path forward: straight into the desert.)

But reading this book, I’ve find myself being brought back: I run no more. Like awakening from a deep sleep, I’m opening my eyes, and beginning to see. In many ways, Kalanithi’s description of the pursuit of medicine sounds very much like what I imagine the practice of law (or any other profession really) to be like: unforgiving (long) hours, and merciless hard work. A (moral) duty, to practice in the right way. A ceaseless striving towards an asymptote: trying trying, falling down 10 times, but always getting back up again. A play on words, our only tool. And above all, empathy: I hope I never lose this quality. 

And just like that, the problems and personal disappointments that have weighed on my heart for the past few weeks and months appear small.

The fine sand glistens in the gentle moonlight, beckoning me. I take a hesitant step forward. This is the path I’ve chosen: I am glad.  A chilly wind howls through the desert. The horizon stretches ahead of me, endless golden sand dunes threatening to swallow me whole - how very poetic, disappearing here, buried by the sands of time. Two steps back: I am scared.

I can’t go on. I’ll go on. 

I take a deep breath, steady myself, and walk on.