Book: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

About 10 years ago, I decided that it was time to rearrange the furniture in my apartment. This was something that I'd done many times before in my life - sometimes as often as once a year. Often, these efforts included mass movements of very heavy objects and it was something I'd always done alone. This wasn't because others (such as my husband) were unwilling to help, but rather because I preferred to have total control over the space. Also, the apartment was tiny and the chances of getting in each other's way were huge.

That particular time was more dramatic than some others as the plan was to move about 2/3 of my bedroom furniture into the living room and vice versa. I had to empty all of the shelving and then move the shelves. What is more, I had to do it all in one day because I was tutoring privately in my home and the rooms needed to be prepared for a visit from a student the following day.

I'd moved about half of the furniture and my belongings around when I hit a wall that I'd never hit before. I was so tired that I started to struggle to carry on. I had to rest and rest I did, but I also had to carry on. By the end, I was so incredibly exhausted that I could barely move. I'd never had that sort of experience before while doing one of my almost annual rearrangements. This was a limit that I'd never come up against before.

People think of aging as getting wrinkles, developing diseases so you have to take medications, becoming enfeebled, etc., but what aging really is is a series of limits placed upon you. I hit mine in my early 40's. It took me so by surprise that I was shocked when I couldn't do something I'd always done. It had never occurred to me that a task I'd done so many times would be beyond my grasp due to my own bodily limitations, and I was someone who was well-versed in bodily limitations up to that point due to weight issues and back pain. This was a whole other animal. It was about a loss, not something that I'd struggled with or could be traced to injury. It was a loss that happened because years were passing by.

This year I turned 50 and these issues have only gotten worse. Fatigue in particular stalks my life and sometimes it is hard to function. I'm sure some of my issues are brought on by depression. I may even have some form of chronic fatigue syndrome or adrenal fatigue. However, I'm sure part of it is just about age. Getting older means you just can't do as much no matter how much you may want to or how hard you try. You're in an ever shrinking circle of capability. This is in direct opposition to your youth and young adulthood in which you are in an ever growing sphere of possibility. It's a sobering place to be, and American culture does not do a very good job of preparing you for this. With talk of pushing yourself beyond your limits and being capable of anything if you try hard enough, the message in the U.S. is one of more, more, more, not less. No one ever says that your potential will at one point be limited or that you can't accomplish everything you want no matter how hard you try. If such messages had been out there, I may not have been quite so surprised that I was 40 and couldn't move two rooms of heavy furniture around by myself in an eight-hour period of time.

Atul Gawande's book, Being Mortal, is about death and dying, but it also contains several subtler messages about life and aging. One of the Star Trek series mentioned something about how we face death being as important as how we face life, and I think that is part of his unintended message as well. I realize that people don't like to think about death and probably believe a book about dying and how it is handled (or mishandled) in America at present sounds like one big trip to Bummer-ville. The strange thing is that this book is anything but depressing and is strangely comforting.

The good thing about the sense the book carries is that it's not Pollyanna-ish, over-the-rainbow, or airy fairy in the sense it conveys. It's very down-to-earth and practical, yet sensitive and humanistic. It illustrates what we do to people who are dying because we think that living is more important than the quality of the time they have left. Without going through any sort of recommendations or process descriptions, it provides a guide for not only dying as well as possible, but living as well as you can.

As someone who is currently struggling with a variety of limits due to depression, aging, and stress, I came away with a central message that I think anyone who is in that shrinking sphere of opportunity stage of life can benefit from. That message is that we should strive for the best possible day today. We don't need to have a perfect one. We don't need to focus on long-term plans or goals when we are in a state of pain and difficulty getting through the day. We just have the best day we can given our limits and circumstances. The focus is on what is possible, not reaching far afield with all of the risks that entails.

For a book about death and dying, this was a book that made me feel surprisingly good about life. It made me feel more prepared for my own eventual experience with dying (and we're all going to have one). It also gave me a better sense of how to deal with my present rather than constantly feel that I am failing for not doing better than I am in life. Finally, it also solidified something that I've felt before about medical intervention with those who face terminal illnesses. That is, we often prolong the time we have by gutting the quality of that time. If you are human, this book is worth reading.