The Battle Of Being Mortal Is The

In The End, People Don't View Their Life As Merely The Average Of All Its Moments-which, After All, Is Mostly Nothing Much Plus Some Sleep. For Human Beings, Life Is Meaningful Because It Is A Story. A Story Has A Sense Of A Whole, And Its Arc Is Determined By The Significant Moments, The Ones Where Something Happens. Measurements Of People's Minute-by-minute Levels Of Pleasure And Pain Miss This Fundamental Aspect Of Human Existence. A Seemingly Happy Life Maybe Empty. A Seemingly Difficult Life May Be Devoted To A Great Cause. We Have Purposes Larger Than Ourselves.

Over Time I Learned That There Are Two Very Different Satisfactions That You Can Have In Your Life. One Is The Satisfaction Of Becoming Skilled At Something. It Almost Doesn't Matter What The Terrain Is. There Is A Deep, Soul-feeding Resonance In Mastery Itself, Whether In Teaching, Writing A Complicated Software Program, Coaching A Baseball Team, Or Marshalling A Group Of People To Start A New Business.

This Is The Reality Of Intensive Care: At Any Point, We Are As Apt To Harm As We Are To Heal.

You Can't Make A Recipe For Something As Complicated As Surgery. Instead, You Can Make A Recipe For How To Have A Team That's Prepared For The Unexpected.

We've Created A Multitrillion-dollar Edifice For Dispensing The Medical Equivalent Of Lottery Tickets - And Have Only The Rudiments Of A System To Prepare Patients For The Near Certainty That Those Tickets Will Not Win. Hope Is Not A Plan, But Hope Is Our Plan.