La Condition Humaine

There was a span of 20 months in my life which, due to personal circumstances, allowed me to read a list of books of which I had never had a chance, due to the investment of time necessary. As a physician, most of my time dealt with scientific disciplines and texts related to my vocation. During these 20 months of an unexpected “sabbatical,” therefore, I made this a life mission.

My list of books was purposely chosen on two criteria:

1. Books that were literary giants and whose neglect made me ashamed; and

2. books so large that if I missed my window, I’d never have another chance to get them under my belt.

My father, also a surgeon, regarded Les Miserablés his favorite book. Of the books on my list--War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Christo, Atlas Shrugged, Slaughterhouse 5, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and about 100 more--I needed to read the Victor Hugo book first. My father had died a decade earlier, and reading this book would allow me to read it with him, journey with him, and mirror the actual neurons and synapses in his brain. What an extraordinary gift!

My father practiced medicine back when it was considered the “noble profession,” a time defined by the altruism of a holy doctor-patient relationship; before medicine became a trade or a commodity. He was a true gentleman.

As I began reading Les Miserablés, I met my father again in the character of the old bishop, Monseigneur Myriel. This noble benefactor sets up the entire novel, showing how compassion and mercy can weave a web, not of entrapment like the tangled web most often cited, but one of safety.

Safe from whom?

Safe from what we have spent millennia evolving convolutions around our reptilian brains, to oppose its selfish, survival-at-any-cost, troglodyte sensibilities--“I want--I take.” Monseigneur Myriel ’s discretionary allowances for the ex-convict Jean Valjean was an anthropomorphizing of the higher brain’s godlike tendencies: we weren’t made in

God’s image; we evolved toward Him.

From my father’s adage, “Goodness is its own reward,” to the last line of Dickens’

A Tale of Two Cities, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” the legacy we leave as human beings is of our own making.

What is a life well-lived? It is the elimination of the barriers between ourselves and others; elimination of the barriers between our inner monsters and what we actually do in life; and elimination of the barriers between what we can do and what we should do

Chosen wisely, it is a win-win.

Victor Hugo got it. My father got it. With some luck, I can, too.