Dr. Mani
4 Powerful Life Lessons A Stranger Taught Me – 30 Years Ago!
He was a young man from a remote village, and he taught me precious life lessons that have lasted for decades.
Jayaraman was 23 years old. He lived in Andampallam, a tiny hamlet nearly 400 kilometers away.
He suffered extreme breathlessness due to an incurable heart condition. Day by day, his condition worsened. He could do nothing but struggle to breathe.
So he had come to the city hospital, all by himself.
Alone.
He had come to seek relief.
He had come to die.
I was the young intern on duty in the medical ward that night. Inexperienced as I was, even I could tell he wasn’t going to make it through to next morning.
His family was far, far away. He was scared. He asked me to sit beside him.
I held his hand, in between intervals of trying different things to ease his discomfort.
Nothing worked.
An hour later, he passed away.
It was one of my first very close encounters with death and dying.
It taught me several precious lessons.
It taught me that life is too short.
For someone steeped in the commonsense logic that people lived to be 60, 70 or 80 years old, it was a rude shock to see someone so young die.
Who knows when our own time will be up?
This brought a new urgency to my everyday existence. I no longer put things off to a distant “tomorrow” that may not come. I try to squeeze as much as possible into my day.
Life has been so much fuller and a lot more enjoyable since then.
It taught me that we are all the same.
The little boy who stood outside our door last year, seeking a donation to buy his school books because his family couldn’t afford it? He could have been me – but for a stroke of luck.
The young man who lay on the hospital bed, tossing restlessly and turning blue as his lungs flooded with fluid? He could have been me – but for a roll of the dice.
Everything in life is so random.
Unplanned.
Arbitrary.
Before that incident, I was a rather self-entitled brat. After it, I wouldn’t be, quite as much.
How could I, after these insights?
I learned to embrace uncertainty, go with the flow, enjoy whatever good fortune came my way – and to be grateful for everything.
It taught me that family matters.
That loved ones are a treasure.
As my patient lay on a hospital bed, as his life ebbed slowly away, his dearest ones weren’t near. The loneliness he experienced on his deathbed was heart-rending.
An Italian secretary in a heart surgery unit once shared this phrase with me: “La famiglia è tutto.”
It means: “Family is everything.”
I extend the message to include special friends and people who care for you, about you.
Keeping them close, always, and mending relationships when they crack or break has been a high priority ever since.
Hopefully, in the dark, dreary last days of my life, I won’t be alone.
And it taught me that every life has a purpose.
A young farmer who died in his prime, far away from home in a city hospital, tended by a novice intern who was just beginning his medical career… that man served a vital purpose in teaching me these powerful, life-defining lessons.
Maybe he didn’t know it himself.
But that’s what happened.
He transformed my life in several meaningful ways. Most important of all, by making me learn that…
Every life is important.
Each one of us is relevant, belongs here.
There’s meaning to his or her existence.
There are no exceptions. At all.
