Book Review

To Live Wise and Worthy

Why do some people find meaning and die happy? What are the secrets to finding happiness and living wisely? What really matters if we want to live a worthy human life?

To live wisely, we must recognise that there are two fundamental truths of a human life. The first is that we have a limited and undefined amount of time—it may be 100 years, it may be 30. The second is that in that limited and undefined amount of time we have an almost unlimited number of choices of how to use our time—the things we choose to focus on and put our energy into—and these choices will ultimately define our lives. When we are born there is no owner’s manual provided, and the clock begins ticking the moment we arrive.

We do not like the words “die” and “death.” Many human activities are designed to shield us from the truth about life; that it is limited, that at least here in this place, we do not have forever. Some of you may have hesitated to pick up a book with the word “die” in the title, fearing somehow that something bad might happen to you for even recognising the reality of your own mortality. You may even find yourself a bit uncomfortable as you read these words, wishing I might move on quickly to another topic.

Still, it is the fact that we die and that our time is limited that makes discovering the secrets to life important. If we lived forever, there would be little urgency to discover the true paths to happiness and purpose since given the luxury of eternity we would surely stumble on them sooner or later. This is a luxury we do not have. At whatever age we find ourselves, death sits nearby. When we are young, we may feel that death is a distant and far-off reality, but having conducted memorial services for people of all ages, including a recent friend who died at 33 while traveling in Kenya. I suggest that death is always close at hand, reminding us to get on with life. Derek Walcott, the Nobel-Prize-winning poet from St Lucia, called time the “evil beloved.” On the one hand, we know that time appears evil because it will take from us all that matters to us, at least in this life; on the other hand, time is also “beloved” because it is our very mortality that gives life a sense of urgency and purpose. Our time is limited and must be used wisely.

Knowledge Versus Wisdom

Knowing how to use this one life to its fullest requires wisdom more than knowledge. Wisdom is different and fundamentally more important than knowledge. We live in a time when knowledge (the number of facts) doubles every six months, but wisdom is in short supply. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, whereas wisdom is the ability to discern what matters and what does not matter. Unless we can discover what really matters, we cannot find true meaning in life.

In my first profession, it was as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. When I was in my twenties I had the privilege of spending a good deal of time with people who were dying. Through those experiences I discovered that individual human beings die very differently. Some people die having lived a life of deep purpose with few regrets. These people come to the end of their lives with a deep sense of having lived a full human life. Others die looking back with bitterness at having missed what really mattered. Even as a young man I realised that some people found the secrets to life and some did not.

Death has never been an abstract concept to me. My father died when he was only 36 years old. He stood up one day at a picnic and that was it. His life had been far from perfect, and now it was over. There would be no do-over. By the time I was 28 years old I had conducted dozens of funeral services and sat with many people in the final days of life. I consider this intimacy with mortality to be a great gift. Maybe because of these experiences, I have always searched for the ‘secrets’ to living a purposeful and fulfilling life. I vowed as a very young person that when my time came, I would not look back in regret for the life I might have lived.

A Personal Experience

My wife is a nurse by training, and from a young age she too was witness to the reality of our mortality. She wokred in the operating room, in a pediatric cancer ward, and in the emergency room. We talk about death regularly. We try to live aware of its presence.

Leslie, my wife, almost died a few times in her life. She was born with a deformed heart and had several major operations beginning when she was a few days old, but three years ago we had an experience that reminded us anew of the fragility of our lives.

She was going into the hospital for a routine and non-life threatening surgical procedure. To this day I can remember our daughter Sydney, then ten years old, saying: “Mommy, you don’t really need to have that surgery, do you?” Leslie reassured her and the next morning was admitted for surgery.

What happened in the next 72 hours is still a blur to me. The surgery went well, she was groggy and then uncomfortable. The kids and I stayed with her at the hospital into that evening. The next day she felt a little better, and I left her room early in the evening so she could rest, telling her that I was going to get some things done at the office and that I would come visit the next day about noon. We anticipated she would be home within a day.

The next morning I called the hospital around 11 a.m, and my wife was saying things that made no sense, talking to me in sentences that were unintelligible. Rushing to the hospital in the middle of the night she had experienced a stroke at the age of 37. She was seeing triple and was being transferred to the neuro—intensive-care unit. Later that day, the neurologist asked me to make the hardest decision of my life thus far. “Your wife has had a stroke and we don’t know why. We have to make a choice now as to whether to put her on blood-thinning medication. It could save her life, or it could lead to more bleeding, depending on what caused the stroke. The decision is yours.”

Excerpt from ‘The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die’ by John Izzo. Published by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited.