Learning to see things as they are, by Lucy Kalanithi

Meditative Story

WaitWhat

Meditation, Mindfulness, Society And Culture, Personal Stories, Mental Health, Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Storytelling, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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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Each episode of Meditative Story combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with immersive music and gentle mindfulness prompts. Read the transcript for this story: meditativestory.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi listeners, it's Rohan, and I want to tell you about a show I love that will help you
0:04.8	find better sleep starting tonight.
0:08.4	It's called Nothing Much Happens, and in each episode Storyteller Catherine Nikolai
0:14.8	tells you a picturesque pleasant bedtime story.
0:18.4	The stories are family-friendly, celebrate everyday pleasures, and train you over time
0:24.1	to fall asleep faster with less waking up in the night.
0:28.4	The show has helped millions of people get consistent, deep sleep.
0:32.8	So tonight, how about you check out Nothing Much Happens, wherever you get your podcasts?
0:46.2	Seeing things just as they are has been one of the great lessons of my life.
0:51.4	But it's something that I've had to work at consciously for years.
0:55.7	The amazing thing about Katie, my funny, feisty, thoughtful, brave girl, is that she does
1:02.3	it effortlessly.
1:05.4	She doesn't have anything to unlearn.
1:09.5	Lucy Kalanathy is an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford Medical School in California,
1:14.8	and the widow of Paul Kalanathy, whose posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, I remember
1:20.8	reading shortly after it was published in 2016.
1:24.7	The story she shares with us here is very special.
1:27.9	It's about how much wisdom and delight there can be even when we're surrounded by tragic
1:32.2	loss, when we see life and death through the eyes of a child, eyes unburdened.
1:40.0	I'm Rohan, and I'll be your guide for meditative story.
2:05.1	Some of the meditation prompts I'll share during the story may work really well for you.
2:10.4	Others less so, that's okay.
	...

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