A Real Life Hero: Oliver Sacks

I first encountered Oliver Sacks in 1995, when I read his then newly-published An Anthropologist on Mars. The neurological circumstances faced by the individuals he profiled in that book (and, as I came to discover, in much of his other writing) were strange and fascinating. Yet what I ultimately found most compelling in these accounts was the dignity and humanity with which he approached his subjects. Though the conditions afflicting these women and men doubtlessly set them apart from the mainstream, at no point did Dr. Sacks treat them as victims, or as "other." The compassionate words he wrote about them revealed their author's eyes and heart, which saw these people not as broken manifestations of pathology, but whole beings inherently worthy of deep respect.

"9.13.09OliverSacksByLuigiNovi" by Luigi Novi. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Dr. Sacks is now 81 years old, and recently wrote a piece in The New York Times about his experience of this last chapter of his life, as he faces the conclusion of his decade-long struggle with cancer. As I read his beautiful words, I shed tears of sadness for the fact that those of us here on Earth will shortly be losing this extraordinary man--but also tears of gratitude that he was here with us to begin with.

Oliver Sacks on Wikipedia

OliverSacks.com


(Have a real-life hero or she-ro to nominate for this blog? Let me know at misslynn [at] misslynn [dot] com!)