Using empathy and a clear-eyed view of memento mori, BJ Miller shines a light on an area that mostly ignored in modern healthcare: preparing for death.
At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. Take the time to savour this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think about death and honour life through memento mori.
Miller’s passion for palliative care stems from personal experience — a shock sustained while a Princeton undergraduate cost him three limbs and nearly killed him. But his experiences form the foundation of a hard-won empathy for patients who are running out of time.
Having watched a great number of TED on the theme of how and why we should look at death, none has stayed with me more piercingly and offered more wisdom and clarity and depth, all delivered with rare humanity and calm, than the speech I was privileged to hear from BJ Miller. With each passing sentence, I felt I was being ushered into a grounded, lucid, compassionate and possibly life-changing perspective on dying, living and all that sits at the centre of our existence.
Enjoy today’s Memento Mori video: (20mins)