Here, too, is a little lead casket, containing element 90, thorium, crystalline thorium, as beautiful as diamonds, and, of course, radioactive - hence the lead casket.These are big questions, and in order to help answer them, I want to extend some thoughts from the pioneering positive psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. At one end of my writing table, I have element 81 in a charming box, sent to me by element-friends in England: It says, “Happy Thallium Birthday,”a souvenir of my 81st birthday last July then, a realm devoted to lead, element 82, for my just celebrated 82nd birthday earlier this month. My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience - and death.Īnd now, at this juncture, when death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence - an all-too-close, not-to-be-denied presence - I am again surrounding myself, as I did when I was a boy, with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity. It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how little time, how little life, I had left. Here’s a small sampling of some of Sacks’s great conversations and shorter reflections.Ī few weeks ago, in the country, far from the lights of the city, I saw the entire sky “powdered with stars” (in Milton’s words) such a sky, I imagined, could be seen only on high, dry plateaus like that of Atacama in Chile (where some of the world’s most powerful telescopes are). And it’s everywhere in the elegant body of work he left behind-his many books, but also his shorter essays and interviews. Over the course of his life’s work, Sacks approached his many questions with rigorous intellect and, above all, empathy.
Sacks died on Sunday after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis earlier this year. He was a master at connecting curiosity to observation, and observation to emotion.
To say Sacks had a gift for this method of exploration is an understatement. He focused on modes of perception that are delightful not only because they are subjective, but precisely because they are very often faulty. Which is another way of exploring experiences of living. More specifically, Sacks had a fascination with ways of seeing and hearing and thinking. The neurologist’s writing is infused with this quality-equal parts buoyancy and diligence, the exuberant asking of difficult questions. Oliver Sacks always seemed propelled by joyful curiosity.
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