Atul Gawande, in an article for The New Yorker, writing about the soaring cost of health care, looks at the role dying and the terminally ill play in those costs:

Twenty-five per cent of all Medicare spending is for the five per cent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months which is of little apparent benefit. … In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality, and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.Technology sustains our organs until we are well past the point of awareness and coherence.

Death is the enemy. Though it’s not just death in the literal sense. Admitting defeat can be hard, and refusing to give up can cost us dearly. Whether the President or Congress continues to escalate a war in the hopes of finally turning it around, or someone stays in a troubled relationship in the hopes that things might just get better, it’s not easy to raise the white flag. (more…)

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, it was fashionable to put a quote underneath your photo. Most classmates had rock lyrics, like, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I was captivated by a line from a Robert Browning poem, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” (more…)