Saturday, 9 November 2024

Oliver Sachs

I do not (at least consciously) have a steady sense of life’s meaning. I keep losing it, and having to re-achieve it, again and again. I can only re-achieve (or “remember”) it when I am “inspired” by things or events or people, when I get a sense of the immense intricacy and mystery, but also the deep ordering positivity, of Nature and History. 

I do not believe in, never have believed in, any “transcendental” spirit above Nature; but there is a spirit in Nature, a cosmogenic spirit, which commands my respect and love; and it is this, perhaps most deeply, which serves to “explain” life, give it “meaning.


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When moods of defeat, despair, accidie and “So-what-ness” visit me (they are not infrequent!), I find a sense of hope and meaning in my patients, who do not give up despite devastating disease. If theywho are so ill, so without the usual strengths and supports and hopes, if they can be affirmative — there must be something to affirm, and an inextinguishable power of affirmation within us. 

I think “the meaning of life” is something we have to formulate for ourselves, we have to determine what has meaning for us… It clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love


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