Sunday Blog 193 – 13th July 2025
What’s got my attention this week was an interview with Atul Gawande, one of my favourite clinician authors. Take, for example the first lines of the introduction his book, Being Mortal;
I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them.
I listened to an interview with him in April this year on The Rest is Politics (well worth a listen) and this quote near the end of the episode leapt out at me. A clinician once told Atul, “say yes to everything before you’re 40, and say no to everything after you’re 40. What he meant by that was, you don’t know what you’re good at. You don’t know what you’re going to be excited by.”
So I’m twenty years late to the no party. This is in fact my third blog on the difficult art (for me) of saying no. I’ve mentioned before my advice card saying “No makes way for yes” This Truth Bomb card is yellowed from its exposure. It’s from of a set, and you can see it’s a different colour from all the other ones. I’ve returned it to its box today, singled out, now a different colour, but still largely unheeded.
I’ve said “yes” to a University Creative Writing course (at last) and that’s why the Sunday Blog is coming late to you a little bit today. I’ve been unable to tear myself away from watching Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House. Definitely excited by my studies, even at my age.
However, I said no to an impulse buy for hiking shoes yesterday on Facebook. I read the reviews before kissing away the bargain basement price of $50, today and today only.
Is that a sign of progress? I’m gonna go yeah!