It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.
Interpretation
Memory is the essence of our existence, serving as the only proof of our life experiences.
In this quote, Abraham Verghese highlights the profound significance of memory in our lives. He suggests that memory is not only a personal currency, reflecting our experiences and identity, but also the sole confirmation of our existence. By emphasizing memory, he implies that the richness of life is derived from the moments we hold and recall, thus reinforcing the idea that our past shapes our present and future.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of cherishing memories during a wedding.
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient whose care I am taking over is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.
The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held; instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.
God is the Great Engineer, creating circumstances to bring about moments in our lives of divine importance, leading us to divine appointments
Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
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