Learning to see things as they are, by Lucy Kalanithi
Meditative Story
WaitWhat
4.6 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2019
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Watching her daughter chase a balloon through a graveyard, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi comes to realize that maybe she can learn from four-year-old Cady. After the death of her husband, Dr. Paul Kalanithi, author of "When Breath Becomes Air," Lucy focuses on Cady, on teaching Cady how to deal with grief and loss. But as Cady bounds through the cemetery, on the way to see her dad, she teaches Lucy. She sees things that Lucy misses. She doesn’t bring as many assumptions to situations, so it’s easier for her to see them as they are. For Cady, right now, at this age, things just are.
Read "When Breath Becomes Air."
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Seeing things just as they are has been one of the great lessons of my life. |
| 0:11.0 | But it's something that I've had to work at consciously for years. |
| 0:16.0 | The amazing thing about Katie, my funny, feisty, thoughtful, brave girl, is that she does it effortlessly. |
| 0:23.6 | She doesn't have anything to unlearn. |
| 0:31.6 | Lucy Kalanathy is an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford Medical School in California, |
| 0:36.6 | and the widow |
| 0:37.9 | of Paul Calanity, whose posthumous memoir, when breath becomes air, I remember reading shortly |
| 0:44.0 | after it was published in 2016. The story she shares with us here is very special. It's |
| 0:50.5 | about how much wisdom and delight there can be be even when we're surrounded by tragic loss, |
| 0:56.0 | when we see life and death through the eyes of a child, eyes unburdened. |
| 1:02.0 | In this series, we combine immersive first-person stories, |
| 1:07.0 | breathtaking music and mindfulness prompts, |
| 1:10.0 | so that we may see our lives reflected back to us in other people's stories. |
| 1:15.8 | And that can lead to improvements in our own inner lives. |
| 1:20.9 | From Wait What, this is meditative story. |
| 1:27.0 | I'm Rohan, and I'll be your guide. Thank you. is a meditative story. |
| 1:27.5 | I'm Rohan and I'll be your guide. |
| 1:29.8 | The body relaxed. |
| 1:49.6 | The body breathing. |
| 1:52.2 | Your senses open. |
| 1:54.4 | Your mind open. |
| 1:57.5 | Meeting the world. |
... |
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