Four Offerings - the focus at thresshold of death
Siddhartha Mukherjee gave a 2024 commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania
Summary: Mukherjee is a doctor, a cancer researcher, and a writer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. His speech was the most touching I’ve seen this year. In it he describes his experience with cancer patients on the brink of death, from a seven year-old girl to a man who became a grandfather the week before.
He titles his speech, “Four Offerings” and he explains why:
“In the days before these patients, and many others like them, have died, I have asked them if there were things that they would have wanted to say, or do, in anticipation of that final moment. And, of course, the answers have been broad and diverse. Some have wanted to climb mountains. Some to read a poem: I heard a fly buzz. Some have wanted to rage against fate. Some have wanted peace and sanctity.
“But over time, I began to see a pattern, a universality, a convergence. Abstracted, simplified, denuded, stripped of particulars, every person that I have met at this moment of transition wanted to make four offerings. Two statements, and two questions: - I want to tell you that I love you
I want to tell you that I forgive you
Would you tell me that you love me ?
Would you give me your forgiveness ?
“Four offerings. Offerings so important and profound that I must force myself, even as I speak to the most attentive and sympathetic of audiences, to repeat them.
I want to tell you that I love you
I want to tell you that I forgive you
Would you tell me that you love me ?
Would you give me your forgiveness
Mukherjee encouraged the audience of graduates, at this time of transition, to think of someone they love, ann make those same offerings to them. He says this is a lesson from the dying that we can apply to living. We each need to make these four offerings. There is no need to wait. Do it now, he counsels, “as you depart for the airport with your overstuffed suitcases, just as you will do it when you await the final crossing, where there is nothing to carry, and only a lonely boat to help you cross.”