Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Theirs is the stoneless fruit of love
Whose love is returned.
~ Tiruvalluvar, The Kuralu

“I hope one day you will see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your own slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don’t. if you keep saying your slippers aren’t yours, then you’ll die searching, you’ll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”

He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
~William Yeats, “The Choice”