Being Mortal

by

Atul Gawande

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Being Mortal makes teaching easy.
Laura Carstensen is a Stanford psychologist who studies the changes in people’s motivations over time. She was inspired to pursue this work when she was involved in a nearly fatal car crash at 21 years old, and she realized that her priorities shifted drastically from wondering what she would do with her life to trying to spend valuable time with family and friends. She conducts several studies over the course of her career which prove that people’s motivations and priorities change drastically not based on age, but based on how much time they believe they have left to live.

Laura Carstensen Quotes in Being Mortal

The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Laura Carstensen or refer to Laura Carstensen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

Fifteen years later, when she was a scholar, the experience led her to formulate a hypothesis: how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy, you believe you will live forever. […] When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all that stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid—achievement, creativity and other attributes of “self-actualization.” But as your horizons contract—when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain—your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Laura Carstensen
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

It’s worth pausing to consider what had just happened. Step by step, Sara ended up on a fourth round of chemotherapy, one with a minuscule likelihood of altering the course of her disease and a great likelihood of causing debilitating side effects. An opportunity to prepare for the inevitable was forgone. And it all happened because of an assuredly normal circumstance: a patient and family unready to confront the reality of her disease.

I asked Marcoux what he hopes to accomplish for terminal lung cancer patients when they first come to see him. “I’m thinking, can I get them a pretty good year or two out of this?” he said. “Those are my expectations. For me, the long tail for a patient like her is three to four years.” But this is not what people want to hear. “They’re thinking ten to twenty years. You hear that time and time again. And I’d be the same way if I were in their shoes.”

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli, Dr. Paul Marcoux, Laura Carstensen
Related Symbols: Hospital
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:
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Being Mortal PDF

Laura Carstensen Quotes in Being Mortal

The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Laura Carstensen or refer to Laura Carstensen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

Fifteen years later, when she was a scholar, the experience led her to formulate a hypothesis: how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy, you believe you will live forever. […] When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all that stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid—achievement, creativity and other attributes of “self-actualization.” But as your horizons contract—when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain—your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Laura Carstensen
Page Number: 96
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

It’s worth pausing to consider what had just happened. Step by step, Sara ended up on a fourth round of chemotherapy, one with a minuscule likelihood of altering the course of her disease and a great likelihood of causing debilitating side effects. An opportunity to prepare for the inevitable was forgone. And it all happened because of an assuredly normal circumstance: a patient and family unready to confront the reality of her disease.

I asked Marcoux what he hopes to accomplish for terminal lung cancer patients when they first come to see him. “I’m thinking, can I get them a pretty good year or two out of this?” he said. “Those are my expectations. For me, the long tail for a patient like her is three to four years.” But this is not what people want to hear. “They’re thinking ten to twenty years. You hear that time and time again. And I’d be the same way if I were in their shoes.”

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli, Dr. Paul Marcoux, Laura Carstensen
Related Symbols: Hospital
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis: