"What if we were exactly what's needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what's needed to heal the world?"
"Listening Generously," an interview between Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen and Krista Tippett, is a beautiful conversation of the wonder and majesty of paying attention to one's life and living fully into what is given. Here is brief portion of the broadcast transcript.
Ms. Tippett: It seems, as you say, you probably didn't plan this. I'm sure you didn't plan this. But what you said earlier about how we're all given the lives we have and that that's good enough and even what's wrong with us is part of what we have. It seems like it's been really important in your medical practice and also in how you've helped other physicians, how you've reflected on your profession, that you also have struggled in your life with this debilitating illness of Crohn's disease, which you were told was fatal also earlier.
Dr. Remen: Mm-hmm. But, Krista, I don't think it's what's wrong with us. I don’t see — you know, sometimes what appears to be a catastrophe over time becomes a strong foundation from which to live a good life. It's possible to live a good life even though it isn't an easy life. I think this is one of the best kept secrets in America.
Ms. Tippett: You say that the pursuit of perfection has become a major addiction of our time. I mean, we throw that word addiction around a lot, but I've never heard anyone talk about our pursuit of perfection as an addiction.
Dr. Remen: Well, I think perfection is the booby prize in life, actually. It's very isolating, very separating, and it's also impossible to achieve. So you're always struggling to become something you're not. But, you know, this is one of the great — it sounds funny — I was going to say the great joys of working with people on the edge of life. The view from the edge of life is so much clearer than the view that most of us have, that what seems to be important is much more simple and accessible for everybody, which is who you've touched on your way through life, who's touched you, what you're leaving behind you in the hearts and minds of other people is far more important than whatever wealth you may have accumulated.
Ms. Tippett: Now, what is your understanding of why that simple truth that we've all heard said, and it makes so much sense, why is that hard for us, for human beings to take seriously before we get to that edge of life, or for many of us?
Dr. Remen: I think we get distracted. We get distracted by stories other people have told us about ourselves, that we are not enough, that we will be happy if we have material goods, that material goods will keep us safe. None of these stories are true. What is true is that what we have is each other.
Ms. Tippett: Again, you know, that's so — it's lovely and it's clearly true, and yet we don't…
Dr. Remen: We don't live there.
Ms. Tippett: We don't live there.
Dr. Remen: And this is why I see people with cancer and other people who have encountered very difficult experiences in their lives as teachers, teachers of wisdom. It's as if the wisdom to live well is, at the moment, the repository of this wisdom are the sick people in our culture, the ill people in our culture.
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