The other night my husband and I watched the PBS American Masters documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life. I was familiar with him because I had seen the movie Awakenings and had also read the book on which that the movie is based. In addition to Awakenings, I also have read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Uncle Tungsten, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, and An Anthropologist on Mars.

Sacks, it seems, had a great capacity for empathy and looking deep into another person’s psyche. Often, it was people who the rest of the world had tossed aside or given up on—people who seemingly had nothing left to offer. In the case of Awakenings, they still were themselves, but unable to communicate with the outside world.

At the end of the PBS documentary he read from an Op-Ed in the New York Times he had written in February 2015 not long before he died. The words jumped out to me from the screen:

There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

—Oliver Sacks from My Own Life, an Op-Ed in the New York Times, February 19, 2015

I love his phrase, “I have had an intercourse with the world.” What a tantalizing way to describe what we humans do when we interact fully with the world around us. We are filled with awe, wonder, and adventure when we travel, meet people, and have experiences that make us alive.

He also says, “There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever.” We as humans like to categorize items . . . whether it be books, plants, elements, animals, or humans. I find it easy to relegate people to a “group” and fail to see their uniqueness. It takes more work to do that. I have to interact with them. Listen to them. Really see them. 

Often, people are grouped into color, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation . . . numerous categories. But that does not really let us know an individual person . . . not their ideas, creativeness, all the things that make them who they are.

Hearing his words made me want to slow down and take more time to really look at the people I meet everyday—to recognize their uniqueness and maybe see a little of who they are . . . besides whatever label I may have given them in my mind.

His quote reminded of this Martha Graham quote which I have hanging in my office at home:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. . . . No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

—Martha Graham (1894-1991) American modern dancer and choreographer

I love this idea of artistic uniqueness that she expresses so eloquently.

Whenever I want to lump people (even myself) into a category, I should stop and realize there is much more to that person than we see on the outside and more than we may know from a casual interaction.