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.
While doing centering prayer, the practice is to let go of any thought or perception. The priority is to be as silent as possible and when that is not possible to let the noise of the thoughts be the sacred symbol for a while, without analyzing them.
The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.
Terrorism has become a festering wound. It is an enemy of humanity.
What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.
What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.
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