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We all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do. Still, one of the things I learned from Mom is this: Reading isn’t the opposite of doing; it’s the opposite of dying.
Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence.
“That’s one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don’t want to talk about ourselves.”
Mom never referred to herself as a working mother. She was a mother. And she worked. “People don’t talk about working fathers,”
was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.
Kabat-Zinn points out that we all know it’s wrong to interrupt each other. And yet we constantly interrupt ourselves. We do it when we check our emails incessantly—or won’t simply let a phone go to voicemail when we’re doing something we enjoy—or when we don’t think a thought through, but allow our minds to fix on temporary concerns or desires.
“Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern world, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves.”
“loneliness can kill people—in different ways can actually make you die.
Have you noticed how many of us refuse to say ‘he or she died’? We’re far more likely to say ‘she passed away,’ as though death were a sterile process of modest preparation, followed by shrink-wrapping, then rapid transit—where?
