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What Am I Made For?
It all began the morning I started coughing up bright red blood. I only did it once or twice, but the amount of blood was not insignificant. So it left me wondering whether I should go to the hospital or something. I hate hospitals, so of course I resisted the obvious answer to that question which anyone else would have understood immediately. I was assisted in my temporary denial by the fact that I actually felt perfectly normal. Other than the blood coating the palm of my hand, I didn’t seem to be in any distress.
Except that I was a few hours from dying.
The bloody coughing stopped as suddenly as it started that morning. But out of an abundance of caution, my wife and I decided I should probably stop by the emergency room – you know – just to be on the safe side.
Three hours later I was trundled into an ambulance, by the ER personnel at the nearby hospital I had stopped at, and sent to a world-renowned medical center 15 miles away. The medical personnel at the original ER weren’t sure I would survive the trip. The problem was that a stent that had been inserted into my aorta three years before, in an experimental procedure, had migrated through the wall of my aorta and punctured my lung. Blood was leaking from my aorta, traveling along the stent like a kind of footbridge, where it ended by trickling into my lung. So what I was coughing up turns out to have been arterial blood from my aorta. Peachy.
The doctors told me later that, in the absence of an intervention, I was down to my last 48 hours to live. The ambulance drivers had apparently been told to avoid any potholes because the doctors believed that my situation was so precarious that any jarring might actually kill me.
Still, I really felt just fine.
When my ambulance arrived at the medical center, it was like one of those scenes in the movies. An entire team was waiting on the curb. They immediately went to work on me, adding more IV’s, shooting me with local anesthetics to insert tubes into my jugulars, and generally acting like my life was as stake.
They rushed me into ICU, wringing their hands and fussing over me. Then, after looking at numerous pictures of my vasculature, the chief of thoracic surgery came and told me what I was going to have to do if I expected to survive the week.
In all, I was going to need a complicated and improvisational surgery (18-20 hours long) that involved multiple simultaneous surgeons operating in tandem. I’ve written about more of the details before. This surgery involved a 30+ percent possibility of being cognitively altered in some way. If I survived the surgery, the recovery would be months. And there was no knowing what kind of life I would ultimately have even if I did manage to survive.
All in all, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through with it.
Now, since you’re reading this, perhaps you have surmised that I not only went through with the surgery but survived it as well. Indeed, I survived unaltered, with the possible exception of becoming even more curmudgeonly than I was before. Also, I find I am vastly more impatient with things that waste my time. And I have vowed to never spend another minute of my life wearing uncomfortable shoes. Also, once you’ve nearly died you’re allowed to say whatever you want after that. Though that last one is not universally acknowledged as a legitimate benefit of having nearly died, it is one that I vigorously defend. Other than this short(ish) list, I am pretty much as I was before. Individual results may vary.
At the time this happened, though, I had only a few hours to decide whether I was going to go through with it at all. It was 2:00 a.m. in the ICU, and it seemed stupid to sleep away what might be the final moments of my life, so my wife and I sat up talking about our years together, how much we loved each other, and the potential risks that lay ahead. She was not pressuring me to undergo the surgery. She wanted me to live, but she understood the suffering that marked my way.
As the hours ticked by that night, the complexity of the decision in front of me seemed insurmountable somehow. Any decision I made would be potentially life changing and maybe not in a good way. But there was a moment, sometime in the wee hours of the night, when a light bulb went off for me and the seeming complexity surrounding my decision suddenly drained away.
I had suddenly recalled my wedding vows.
In my vows to my wife, like many grooms I had promised never to leave her nor forsake her. Now, obviously, that only applies insofar as it is within one’s power to fulfill it. But in my own case, it dawned on me that not to at least try to live was totally at odds with the promises I had made to her. In that moment of realization, my decision became suddenly very simple and obvious: I was going to go through with the surgery.
In the 7 years that have passed since that night, those traumatic events have continued to be a source of wonder and reflection for me. Not all the time, of course, but I periodically return in my mind to that night and discover things I needed to learn from that experience.
One of those things is that vows have a simplifying effect on your life. I think that’s because, in taking a vow, you are giving up personal prerogatives and binding yourself to a course of action for which you are leaving yourself no way out. The exigencies of life no longer hold the complicating sway they once did. You are like the explorer Cortés on the beaches of the New World- you are burning your boats to the waterline and foreclosing any possibility of retreat. When a vow is taken, if you take it seriously and intend to keep it, you have relinquished some aspect of your personal autonomy in favor of something you value more.
Songwriter Billie Eilish teamed up with her brother and long-time writing partner, Finneas O’Connell, to win the 2024 “Best Song” Oscar for “What Am I Made For?”. The song also won the Grammy for “Song of the Year” in 2023. It has taken the world by storm.
The public reaction to the song is reminiscent of the widespread emotional reaction to “This Is Me”, from the movie The Greatest Showman. I wrote about that at the time. In the case of Eilish’s song, you can easily find any number of videos of the song being performed. Frequently people in the audience are quite obviously weeping as they listen to the lyrics.
Here is a very moving performance of the song by one of the current contestants trying out for American Idol.
I used to know, but I’m not sure now, what I was made for. What was I made for?
Clearly the song hits a nerve, but why?
It is hard not to suspect that what she and her brother have done is to explicitly articulate the central question that is haunting the hearts of many who, in some deeply instinctive way, know that they have been told a lie. Many have an abiding sense that their lives are no mere random occurrences. They are endowed with an instinct that they are made, and not only that, but they are made for something. Many people even seem to be growing exhausted by the effort required to maintain the pretenses of trendy materialist superstitions.
The thing about having been made is that you necessarily, then, have a maker. That means that none of us can ever be ultimately self-defining. The purpose of things that are made is inescapably bound up with the will of the one who made it. The one who made us is necessarily the only possible source of answers regarding what we are for. In typically modern and confused fashion, the songwriters engage with this brilliant question entirely through the lens of their feelings. Having implicitly conceded the existence of a maker, they nevertheless fail to seek any answers outside of themselves. This is, quite literally, pathetic – and not in a scornful sense. Intuiting that you are made, only to then confine yourself to yourself for answers, is a tragic path that truly warrants compassion. It is deeply sad to see someone, whose poetic intuition tells them that they are not self-originating, who nevertheless can imagine no greater vantage point for answers than themselves.
And I find myself wondering whether the tears of all those who weep at this song are tears which are reacting, not only to the central question posed by the song, but also to the heartbreak that attends the songwriters’ fixation on themselves.
The problem is that, if we are made, then we are creatures. In such circumstances our very creatureliness precludes ever being able to discover, on our own, what it is that we are made for.
My own experience grappling with life-threatening circumstances in the ICU that night taught me something, and now I can’t stop seeing it everywhere: a meaningful life is only found by submitting ourselves to something higher and more noble than ourselves. Choosing personal suffering in order to honor my marriage vows was the path to ultimately preserving my very life. In other words, my practical experience trying to answer questions about meaning and purpose has pulled me consistently away from making myself the center of my concerns.
The understanding of the world offered by the Christian faith has always been that Jesus is himself the maker implied by Eilish’s profound question, and that he himself provides the answer Miss Eilish seeks. Jesus, the bible claims, is the creative and cohesive force who brought the cosmos into existence. It also says that he himself is the beneficiary of everything he made. One of his apostles, writing about this, said that everything there is was made by Jesus, and for Jesus.
But Jesus is also, though described as the transcendent maker, the one who emptied himself of his own prerogatives to meet the needs of others. If Christianity is true, we live in a universe in which the maker’s own character is one in which both making and self-denial are intertwined. Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, if such a maker crafted the fabric of our own existence in such a way that we would also be made for making and for self-denial.
Jesus wandered around before his death and resurrection saying things like the “last shall be first”, and “he who loses his life will find it”. Maybe he wasn’t just being clever or poetically moralizing but was instead opening for us a peephole into reality itself. What if he was factually addressing the very question that seems to be haunting so many — what am I made for? What if?
What if, against everything we are being told, the very nature of the universe we inhabit is one in which meaning and fulfillment can only ever be found by unselfishly devoting ourselves to something higher than our own appetites? What if, apart from unselfish devotion to something higher, the search for meaning and purpose is actually futile? The paradox of our existence seems to be that only by renouncing our absolute autonomy can we ever discover what we are for. The meaning we find in giving ourselves to our spouses, and to our children, is perhaps a glaring clue – staring us in the face – of something central to the way our very existence has been structured.
What if this is just the way the universe is, and no amount of insisting otherwise will make it so? What if, when Frank Sinatra sang, “I Did It My Way”, he was talking utter bollocks, akin to a crazy person prattling on about the existence of glittery pink unicorns and purple cows?
I write about these things only as a witness, not as an expert. But if my own experience is any indication, it was only when I subordinated my decision to the sacred vows I had made to my wife, that all the clamoring complexity of the moment faded into confident resolve. And, say what you will, the unavoidable reality is that I really did find my life that night by losing it.
Published in GeneralThen I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne…
-John the apostle of Jesus
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Great post. I know this isn’t the main point, but it jumped out at me because it took me a long time to figure this out.
It is easy to get caught up in the decision making process and trying to balance all the possible outcomes of our decisions. It is sometimes called “the paralysis of analysis.” Once one learns to decide what one wants and simply commit, life becomes so much easier.
A wonderful post – thank you.
Wow.
This reminds me rather painfully of the time my late husband had a traumatic brain injury. He suffered this – the result of him tripping and hitting his head – at the main entrance of the Mayo Clinic. I had dropped him off for his usual check-up with his cardiologist and was parking the car in the Mayo ramp across the street when it happened. He was on blood thinners for his heart condition, so I was told to get him right away up the street to the St. Mary’s Mayo hospital ER. He was fine for a while, and he even remembered looking at the results of a CT scan they did promptly. At some point, however, he suddenly became unresponsive, and the doctors turned to me and said that I needed to make a decision NOW as they would have to do surgery right away if they were to save his life. Unlike you, Keith, there was no time to think about it. I said yes, of course, and the room was quickly filled with medical personnel and they whisked him away for an emergency craniotomy. His cardiologist told me later that if this had not happened where it did, my husband would not have survived.
Amazing.
Thank you for this. I have been pondering the meaning of giving up one’s life lately, and this provided needed clarification. God works in mysterious ways.
Wonderful post. Many thanks.
Amen
I enjoy Yer writing, Lowery.
Yer cadence is pleasing and charming.
Thanks, Keith.
My only question would be why, given the medical history you shared later (and in the substack piece, which was fascinating), you had to wonder whether you should go to the hospital.
In hindsight, I wasn’t in distress, and was looking for any rationalization I could find to convince myself that I could avoid going to the hospital.
Coughing up blood is never a good sign….
BTW- don’t blame the 40 lb weight gain postoperatively on the exigencies of blood pressure management. It is part & parcel of the whole body inflammatory response to surgery, hypothermic circulatory arrest & cardiopulmonary bypass. Managing the inflammatory response is one of the great challenges facing medicine- most recently seen in those who succumbed to COVID infections- they frequently die from multisystem organ failure from out of control inflammatory responses-aka SIRS etc
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31613449/#:~:text=Excerpt,exogenous%20source%20of%20the%20insult.
I remember once going to prepare a clearly septic patient for high risk emergency surgery. The patient was getting limited fluids- when I asked the ICU nurse why, she said “her doctor doesn’t want her to get edema”. I told her the only way for the patient to avoid weight gain & edema was to die quickly.
Very interesting – thanks for this info. Having a stent put in 3 years prior was an effort to avoid the hypothermic circulatory arrest route that I ultimately had to go down. The stent very nearly killed me. Some people at the medical school had come up with a way to measure aortic elasticity so they could measure how to put aortic stents in older patients without dissection. I tried that route but ultimately it cost me part of a lung and almost a year before I felt human again.
And don’t get me started about water deprivation in ICU. I’m still bitter. :) I defy anyone on earth to swallow potassium pills on the meager allotment of water I was provided. I finally just started chewing them up to get them down.
Yeah, I guess a rational avoidance of hospitals makes sense.
My late husband’s cardiologist used to say that one could never be too dry for a cardiologist or too wet for a urologist. In my husband’s case, this was a balance he had to deal with constantly as he had kidney problems as well as heart problems.
I remember the big potassium pills my husband was given for some time, monstrous, uncoated pills that were a choking hazard – perhaps those are what you were given too, Keith. We were finally able to switch to normal-sized, coated pills which were much easier to deal with (although he had to take more of them – it was a reasonable trade-off). But why have the big dry pills at all?
The benefits of a near death experience can’t be underestimated. I want to take over the term woke-ness and apply it here. Think of the chances of any one of us being born in the first place. It’s astronomical. We all assume we will be here tomorrow and the next day, but one day we won’t be. Every morning really is a gift.
Totally agree. It was an enormous gift.
I used to tell my junior colleagues that circulatory arrest is as close to death you can get without earning full credit…
I love this.
My Dad has for real, full-blown narcissistic personality disorder and this sums up my life perfectly.
I had a 21 on my math ACT and I was supposed to be a bank examiner. lol He runs his whole operation without knowing almost any of this stuff. I was totally freaked out because with the force of his personality, so I thought he knew everything. I thought it was all sensible. False. Pathetic but true.
So, yep.
i.e. me
Normal people fishing around with questions about who they are and what to do. Not me. lol
I like this.
I like this a lot, and it’s probably perfect, but try having a parent with full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. It’s confusing as hell.
The way I put it, starting years ago even before I would quit a job if they started saying I had to wear a tie every day, was, “When some people say ‘life is too short,’ they mean ‘tolerate everything.’ When I say ‘life is too short,’ I mean ‘tolerate NOTHING.'”
Do that when you are promised a gigantic payday and love, and then get back to me. lol
I was mostly referring to the bit about “never spend another minute of my life wearing uncomfortable shoes” which you quoted.
Profound because it’s true, and beautifully written. Thank you.
I’ve been having this conversation lately with my two adult live-in daughters. They both struggle mightily with serious medical conditions and the mental effects , which naturally make one self-focused. To add to the burden, my oldest has severe OCD, although not the outward behavioral signs.
It’s an insight I’ve come to late in life because of the trials we’ve experienced over the past 10 years or so, and because of the example of some holy people I know. But, it occurs to me the only path to true happiness is a life of service to others — to lay down one’s life. I’m sure it’s a paradox Chesterton must have noted at some time.
When I see the Left tell kids struggling with gender dysphoria — “You are seen. You are loved.” — I can’t help think it’s such a lie. Loving someone requires more than platitudes. Willing someone’s good is only authentic love if it in some way costs you. Like the suffering you undertook to live up to your marriage vows, Keith.
My kids desperately need to get out of their own heads and learn to serve others. Please pray for them.