With The End In Mind (Kathryn Mannix)
OVERVIEW
With The End In Mind by Kathryn Mannix is storytelling at its finest. Mannix spent decades working as a clinician in cancer management and palliative care, and this book is a compilation of the many stories and life lessons gifted to her by patients and their families. It’s wonderfully crafted, thoroughly heartfelt, and as gentle an introduction to death as you’re apt to find. Mannix muses about dignity, legacy, personhood, assisted death, aging, hope, pain, cancer… the whole shebang. She returns again and again to underscore that dying is perfectly alright and that there’s nothing to be afraid of (and because she’s seen it hundreds of times, I’m inclined to believe her).
I usually take extensive notes, which helps me distill content into main themes. This time I’m prepared to say that With The End In Mind is best taken in its entirety. The treasure is the expanse of topics it covers. Besides, how do you summarize a hundred personal stories, each with their own kernels of wisdom?? And so, if you’re someone who’s going to die (and Mannix assures us the death rate remains 100%), and especially if you’re someone who is a little troubled by that, read this book.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Change your perspective
This is advice revived from the very first book review I did, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Like in Being Mortal, With The End In Mind reminds us that our lives are generally divided into two halves. The first half is all about “me” – my job, my achievements, my recognition, my goals. As people age and enter the second half of life they become less preoccupied with self-centered or extrinsic concerns and more preoccupied with close relationships, reflection, and appreciation. Both Gawande and Mannix muse that this shift can be decoupled from aging because it’s really about an increasing sense of how finite our time is. And if death awareness is the trigger, then we can make the shift today. We can choose to devote our time to nurturing close personal relationships. We can choose to live more in the moment with appreciation and joy. And so if we start our ‘second half of life’ today and let people and presence eclipse self-centeredness, when it comes time to die we’ll have fewer regrets.
Be grateful, practice forgiveness, give love
“Who do I need to thank?” “Who do I need to forgive?” “Was I loved and did I love well?” “What am I most grateful for?” According to Mannix, these are the questions that most preoccupy the dying. I mean, what more do you need to hear?! Write a letter, send an email, pick up the phone. Make a commitment to forgive. Tell people you love them. Live with appreciation and gratitude. Simple as that. You probably knew this intuitively but now you have confirmation that these are the primary deathbed concerns. That’s pretty compelling. We’d do well to concern ourselves with these questions now!
(In case you were distracted, ^^^this^^^ is probably the most important thing you’ll read all day)
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? No, religion and faith appear in some of the patient stories
If you had to describe the book in one sentence? A giant, gentle hug of a book that promises it’s okay to die.
Who should read this book? Anyone who’s afraid to die and/or who’s even the slightest bit interested in what dying has to teach us.