Dr. Oliver Sacks on Gratitude

by Nomad

When physician, best-selling author, and professor of neurology Oliver Sacks understood that his battle with cancer could not be won, he expressed a desire to live out his remaining months "in the richest, deepest, most productive way" that he could.

His checklist was a simple but noble one. He explained that he wanted 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." 

In his posthumously-published book, "Gratitude" Sacks reflected on his final days. In summing up, this extraordinary and compassionate man observed:

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.

Reading his book this afternoon, I was very moved by his words.

These days the word "privilege" is very often used in the pejorative sense: something we mistakenly feel deserving of. However, the dictionary also has another less common definition: an opportunity to do something special, worthwhile or enjoyable.

Sacks offers us a reminder how grateful and humbled we should feel just to have been a part, however small and seemingly ineffectual, of this mysterious arrangement.

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