Death is in the air! Today, in an evil tradition that, given the roads humanity has been taking, is unsurprisingly gaining more and more supporters around the world (I can’t wait for my neighbours to remove from my sight the horror shows they call “decoration”); next Saturday, in ceremonies that followers of some religious beliefs dedicate to the remembrance of their loved ones.
Traditions and beliefs aside, it looks like a great time to face our inescapable fate from a practical perspective, one that allows us to live in such a way that, when our turn to be remembered comes, we will be remembered with longing, not with relief that we are gone.
One of the two books that I consider so essential to personal growth that I’ve sent each one to more than 25 friends (I’ve lost count of the ones I’ve bought in physical stores), for those who want to be become a human being who will be missed, Death Is A Day Worth Living, by the extraordinary Dr Ana Claudia Quinta Arantes, is a must-read! My joy today is to debut my readings about books with a work of such magnitude!
[For those who have already read this text when I posted it earlier this year and got worried about the outbursts at the end: don’t worry! The feelings that once were boiling inside my heart are now heated, at most, in a bain-marie. I, too, fell into this perverse trap set by those who live and die as complete egoists! My outbursts will be kept, though! So much selfishness will always be unacceptable!]
Death Is A Day Worth Living*
And An Excellent Reason To Seek A New Look At Life
In one of the most turbulent periods I’ve been through, after having done everything in my power to solve a problem, all I could do was wait for others to finish their tasks before the deadline — which they ended up missing, messing up the rest of my whole life!
Waiting has never been my strength! To make matters even worse, you always find an enlightened and well-intentioned soul to tell you, “Oh, don’t worry; six months go by quickly.” While waiting for the answer I needed, I came across this interview in which a physician was discussing several aspects related to palliative care. Having gone through a couple of negative experiences with health professionals, I was enchanted by the way she addressed such delicate subject and, above all, by the human perspective she puts into her Medicine practice. To make my impression even better, among other themes, she mentioned this event that changed her sense of time. She once broke her foot, and it took her five months to go back to work. People would tell her, “Wow, these months went by quickly, right”? She would answer, “Do you think five months go by quickly? You need to break your foot.”
That was how I first heard of Dr Ana Claudia Quintana Arantes, and that particular statement added an extra layer of connection to a bond that had already been created from the very first lines of the interview, but it wasn’t until earlier last year that I could finally read her best-seller Death Is A Day Worth Living. Right from the first paragraph, my connection with her grew even more. She was there at this party with a lot of strangers when, as expected, she was asked a question that’s among the most trivial ones to come up in any social interaction: “And you? What’s your job”? I picture myself in her shoes. Dim lights, loud music, voices all around, you actually just wanted to be quiet at your place, but a world of thoughts comes to your mind while you wonder, “How am I going to explain these guys what I do? Are they prepared to hear the truth and deal with something so different? How much time/interest do they really have”? As if picturing myself in that scene hadn’t been enough for me to feel her pain, the next chapter starts with one of the statements that summarises me the best: “I see things differently, in ways most people do not allow themselves to.”
Only those who see things differently — a river by the heron instead of a heron by the river — know how discouraging, painful, tiring, stressful, excruciating, having a simple, but different, train of thought can be. The clear message we hear in everything we do/think is: “you, troublemaker who dares to undo whatever is normal, you are wrong”. Thus, we quickly realise that we just do not fit anywhere and, knowing that we won’t be understood when pointing out what others are missing, we give up sharing our perspectives and keep them only to ourselves, secretly hoping that we’ll eventually find someone who will be able to understand our points — which feels like an endless waiting time! Deep inside, however, those thoughts shout louder and louder. The nonconformity with nonsense rules and people’s lack of goodwill, the daring to question the systems, the urge to make things easier, the inability to take “no”, “it’s not possible” or “we always did it this way” for an answer (there must be something that can be done!) — all these feelings are an anguish that never dies! Despite being 100% aware that I’ll never meet Dr Quintana Arantes, knowing that someone out there feels the same way I do is somehow comforting, for it makes me feel a bit less alone.
As challenging and painful as seeing things differently is, I’m sure it was this innate ability, on the top of a disease experienced in her own family, that led her to become not only one of the most respected physicians in Brazil nowadays, but also — and above all — this human being that I learnt to admire so much. To me, this is her greatest achievement: despite having become a physician, she remains “simply” a human being — and the kind who seeks to be today better than she was yesterday, tomorrow better than she is today, and so on. Making my point crystal clear, to me, there’s nothing more disappointing in health professionals than thinking about themselves as demigods (well, prioritising financial gain over patients’ well-being is equally disappointing). Besides not considering herself superior to other human beings, I love the way she almost reduces Medicine to a trivial field in which anyone can succeed if only putting some effort into studying it. I love it even more when she says that Psychology instead is an area indeed complex. Of course Medicine is vital for keeping us alive, but it’s when it comes to feelings/traumas/souls — what and who we really are as human beings — that real complexity begins. Therefore, it makes no sense to consider Medicine a superior science, or to see health professionals as superior individuals, when it’s what’s in our souls that will ultimately give meaning to the lives of the bodies many physicians so arrogantly boast to be able to save.
Her goal, of course, is not to underestimate the relevance of Medicine, but to draw attention to the fact that what has been taught in Medicine schools is not enough; dealing with diseases alone is not enough. To be a good doctor, one needs to learn how to deal with all aspects of human life, including death. Going deeper, what she shows us by approaching such a delicate subject with balanced doses of objectiveness, (sometimes blunt) honesty, sensibility, brilliant insights, practical and wise advices, and a particularly rare sense of humour sprinkled with a bit of sarcasm (to which I relate so much!) is that, to be a good doctor, one needs to be (or at least desire and make an effort to be), first of all, a good** human being — which ultimately should make this book a mandatory course in all Medicine schools and, above all, a must-read for any living creature aiming to become human (for this is a daily effort that goes way beyond having been born in a human shape).
Far beyond provoking her colleagues to rethink the way they practice Medicine, Dr Quintana Arantes reminds us of the challenges we all face in our daily lives: not taking things personally; not judging relationships, especially the familiar ones; not jumping to conclusions; not accumulating resentments and traumas; not spending time on silly/unnecessary things; keeping quiet when we cannot find the right words; forgiving ourselves for our own mistakes; valuing being over having; enjoying the so called “simple things” in life; doing what is really meaningful and gives us a purpose of life — things we all like to think we know and put into practice, but that are “magically” resized by the imminence of death, which she considers to be our greatest master, or, as she put in the interview previously mentioned, our best friend. In the end, it’s by reflecting on death that we finally start learning to become better human beings — which will allow us not only to have an existence that is worth living firstly for ourselves, but also to leave good memories for those who will have to deal with our absence when our time comes.
GETTING SOME MONSTERS OFF MY CHEST
[I spent a couple of weeks considering whether I should publish this addendum or not. I didn’t want anything that’s explicitly or implicitly involved in it to interfere in a negative way with someone’s impressions of the book. The more the time goes by, though, the more I am convinced that, precisely for being loaded with turbulent and disturbing feelings, this part might be the most relevant one in terms of convincing someone of the need to read this book. So, I decided to keep it, preceded by this disclaimer: the following paragraphs are intense, deep, raw, heavy, blunt, strong, dark, sad, shocking, wild! You’ve been advised. Keep reading it at your discretion.]
While I believe that everything said in the review above can be easily confirmed by anyone who has read this book, I can’t deny that part of why it strikes me so much is an extremely personal (and deeply tragic) context. To me, one of the most disturbing observations the author brings to our attention is the efficiency of an imminent death to solve conflicts from a lifetime. Putting it my way, a person spends a whole life being a complete jerk — often completely aware of it! — but then, when death is on the corner, they suddenly decide to ask for forgiveness and/or to forgive. I do love the way Dr Quintana Arantes subverts the logic of many popular beliefs, but my heart is far from reaching the same level of compassion as hers. So, if she’s right when she states that, contrary to what is said, the last impression is the one that lasts longest, well, you can call me insensitive, cold, heartless, whatever, but, to me, this last-minute questionable regret is just the most revolting attitude a person can have at the end of their life, meaning it will only leave me with the worst last impression ever!
It’s just so easy for someone to spend a lifetime knowing exactly what they need to do to become every day a human being better than they were the day before, but deliberately choosing to do everything exactly the opposite, relying on the presumed assurance that, when they are on the brink of death, they can take advantage of the fact that people around them will be weakened to ask for forgiveness, and everything will be fine — that is, fine for who’s dying. The person spends their whole life purposely making a point of hurting others, of putting on their shoulders burdens that they themselves couldn’t bear to carry, of being unpleasant, petty, spiteful, resentful, incoherent, extremely and unnecessarily strict towards everything and everyone, relentlessly intolerant of the slightest flaws of others while, of course, turning both eyes blind to their own (deeply serious) mistakes, and childishly refusing to be confronted about them. There’s no need to make any effort to change! One can make as many mistakes as they want, be as bad as they want, as miserable as they want (consequently, make everybody’s lives as miserable as possible), and never regret it because, when death knocks at their door and there is no more time to become a better person and act differently, everyone will soften towards them and forgive them in the blink of an eye. I can’t think of something more convenient and selfish! And I really can’t find words to describe how much this revolts me! I just h-a-t-e people like that!
Ironically, the worst tragedy of all this is that, by nature’s imposition, not having had the right to choose, such a person was placed in my life in a way that, not even after their death can they, neither the pain they have caused, be removed from it. As if it wasn’t terrible enough, this person is now at a stage in which they don’t even have the intellectual capacity to understand the damage that will forever remain inside me, much less to try to change their behaviour (which pride never allowed them to do in an entire lifetime). In other words, at this point, this an irreversible tragedy! I will never understand the logic of those who choose to immortalize themselves in other’s lives by doing everything they know these people hate the most instead of creating moments and feelings that will be missed — never! And there’s no point in trying to present me a bunch of psychological arguments that explain this or that. I’ve probably considered all of them already. With a lot of effort, my brain can swallow it, but my heart will never ever accept it!
All this to reinforce that, in short, I believe this is the greatest lesson this book tries to teach us: how to live in a way that, when our time comes, those who will have to deal with our absence will be left with the pain of missing us, not with the pain of having been forced to live with a miserable being, an unbearable burden, and a never-healing wound!
*Originally published on 25 January 2024, on the (now inactive) Musings N’ Music Medium profile.
**According to the Bible, actually, no human being is essentially good, but that’s a loooong discussion. Maybe it will come, at some point.