Developing your Ikigai
CONVOCATION ADDRESS, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, JUNE 7, 2010 BY PROFESSOR OF SURGERY ABDALLAH S. DAAR
Abdallah S. Daar
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On this important day why
do I wish I were in your place
instead of mine? Because there
is more uncertainty in your
lives, and that means more
promise, a greater flutter of
the heart, more likelihood of
more silos being shattered, a
more equal and just world.
Among you are those so privileged
you came to this great
university almost by birthright;
others have struggled
and sacrificed greatly to get here. Your individual stories
are fascinating, yet you share many wonderful values.
Your generation is less inclined to judge others by wealth
or background, religion, sexual orientation or skin color.
Let me tell you a story. When I was a surgeon in Oman,
I had a wonderful Canadian colleague called McDonald,
who had strong, healthy daughters and sons, one of
whom had a new girlfriend. He called home to say he
was bringing Jane for dinner and when they arrived,
the parents had a slightly puzzled look, and calling the
son aside, Dr. McDonald said: "Why didn't you tell us
on the phone Jane was black?" The son replied: "Dad, I
just hadn't noticed!" That is one reason why I came to
Canada and why Canada is such a great country.
Today is a day of many transitions: from the womb
of university to the world of work; from the loving
embrace of parents to the world of outside freedom;
from dependency to independence; from youth to
adulthood. But what will you make of that growing
up? Adults are not all that smart after all. One of my
favorite books is "The Little Prince" by Antoine de St.
Exupery, in which the Little Prince says "Grown-ups
never understand anything by themselves, and it is
tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining
things to them". I learnt from the Little Prince to
see everything with childlike wonder. So what else do
incipient grown-ups need to know?
Humanity has never had so many tools with which to
build a more perfect life. Cheap travel, computers, cell
phones, the Internet, social networks, the ability with
one click to donate a mosquito bed net that might save
an African child from dying of malaria. But in these
times of transition, all this may seem confusing and you
may think you are alone in this confusion. But you are
not. None of you knows where you will be or what you
will be doing in 5 years. So relax. Be excited and challenged
by the uncertainty, knowing it will all work out
well in the end.
The very meaning of life is change, and all change,
even at the DNA level, is risky. You could spend much
time worrying, trying to mitigate risk. You will not
always succeed, and if you try to mitigate every risk, you
will mitigate the very joy out of life. There will always
be black swans. Learn early what's important and what's
not, and don't sweat the small stuff. Learn to listen to
your inner voice, and if it says take that fork in the road,
take it, and if that turns out to be wrong, learn from the
experience and move on. That inner voice in time will
help you distinguish calculated risks from recklessness.
But first you need to foster that inner voice through
sincere reflection. Don't sleep without reflecting on your
day's actions and their motives. That inner voice will
become your best friend. It may not always seem rational
or logical at first, for some of what it says comes from
the heart. But it will help to chart your own road in
life, allowing you to grow naturally, alone internally, but
outside in comradeship, working with others in groups
yet avoiding groupthink. It will become the seat of your
passion, your idealism, the font of all your innovations.
Without that inner voice there is no real "you". So if it
means taking a year or two to backpack in the Andes or
the Himalayas to discover it that will be time well spent.
But if you discover it early here at University Avenue,
that's great too, for it will leave you more time to travel,
and travel allows you to listen to the stories of other
people. As Athol Fugard observed, "The only safe place
is inside a story." You can have no empathy, no full
human life if you don't learn to listen to other people's
stories, and let them touch you.
When I was a medical student in Uganda and violence
and madness broke out around me, there were times
when death was very close. That sense of vulnerability
shaped my approach to life. I learnt to value all life
immensely, and to realize that others have needs and sufferings
that I may be able to alleviate through my work.
Later, as a transplant surgeon, I learnt in a very practical
way what life and death actually mean. So, when is it that
you die? It is not when the heart stops, for the heart can
be restarted. It is when the brain dies that a person really
dies. This is why the human brain with its mind is the
greatest, most important, most evolved gift in the whole
of creation. To waste it, to let it lie fallow, not to use it
to reduce life's inequities, is a huge crime. To misuse it,
to reduce the sum of goodness in creation, is an even
bigger crime.
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Brain death has thus become the basis of organ donation
for transplantation, a direct form of altruism. I
believe that altruism is hard-wired in us, ultimately an
expression of our common humanity, of thinking of ourselves
as members of one species, with not just rights but
duties and obligations to one another and with stewardship
responsibilities to Nature. The African philosophy
of Ubuntu says that "I am because we are." And no one
has expressed this sentiment better that Martin Luther
King when he said "It really boils down to this: that all
life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
As you go out into the world you will interact with
many people. How will you know them? You could
ask them what books they read. What is their most
memorable or moving moment? Or what is their greatest
mistake. My most memorable moment was when an
incredibly sad mother approached to ask me to remove
the tiny kidneys of her prematurely born baby with brain
abnormalities that resulted in his death. She wanted
me to transplant them into another child who would
otherwise die without functioning kidneys. I am sure
that bereaving mother would gladly have given up her
own life to save her child. But she could not. And here
she was, thinking of how she could help save the life of
another child through that singular act of generosity.
And my biggest mistake? It was to have spent so little
time with my children when they were growing up. One
of them is in the audience today. I was too busy studying
and working and doing research. I wish I had learned
then how important it is to lead a balanced life.
In the end, you will ask yourselves if you have led
a good life. How will you know? Did you sleep easily
at night? Did you make a difference? Were you part
of a community? Healthy food, exercise, not smoking
will increase your life expectancy to some extent. What
will make a bigger difference, though, is having close
friends, a loving family, being part of a caring, mutually
supportive community that hugs and kisses and creates
healthy interdependencies. I love the saying "A stranger
is a friend I haven't met yet." These are the things that
will give you your own "ikigai" as the Japanese call it- the
reason to wake up in the morning; the reason for being.
Today the sun rose at 5:38:06 in Toronto. So let me read
this little poem I wrote for you. I have called it:
05:38:06
Beguiling, mysterious, searching as a 5 year old
granddaughter's smile
Today's first rays peeked from the edge of darkness, seemed
to ask:
Will you journey with me, mile after mile
Until I am commanded back across the horizon at dusk?
Choiceless, will my essence reveal your trampling, irontinged
leather boots
Hurting, humiliating, adding more ice water to that sac
around your coeur
Or show you sandaled, sapiential, stopping to smell those
frangipani shoots
On your way out to listen to the story of the other?
That flame in the belly, what is it to achieve?
Perchance to illumine those dark spaces where silent tears
flow,
Adding another strand to Martin Luther's weave?
For when you call, there is never an answer, only an echo,
an echo
Congratulations again. Go in confidence. The world is
waiting!
Abdallah Daar
A video of Abdallah's talk is available at http://www.vimeo.com/12492922 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V5ElO_ZdYc. [Ed.]
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