Oliver Sacks and the Art of Choosing Compassion Over Vengeance – The Marginalian
“Compassion,” Karen Armstrong wrote in her moving meditation on the true meaning of the Golden Rule, “It asks us to look into our hearts, find out what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstances, to inflict that pain on anyone else.” But when our own hearts are gripped by the threat and fear of imminent pain, how can we get out of this fear-filled state and consider, with kindness and sincerity, the truth of another?
That's what they are smart and amazing Oliver Sacks (July 9, 1933–August 30, 2015) captures one of the many anecdotes Travel: Life (public library) – his best memoir of love, madness, and life lived to the fullest.
He recounts an incident in the spring of 1963, during the heyday of motorcycling and weightlifting, the focus of which is an epitome of the one genius that would define his work and his legacy – the delicate and demanding art of peering into another's mind with curiosity and vulnerable humanity.
Dr. Sacks writes:
I was riding along Sunset Boulevard leisurely, enjoying the weather – it was a beautiful spring day – and minding my own business. I saw a car behind me in my mirror, I waved to the driver to pass me. He sped up, but when he caught up with me, he suddenly swerved towards me, making me swerve to avoid a collision. It didn't occur to me that this was done on purpose; I thought the driver was drunk or could not. As it passed me, the car slowed down. I also slowed down until he motioned for me to pass him. As I did so, it swung into the middle of the road, and I avoided being pushed over the edge. This time there was no mistake in his aim.
I never started a fight. I have never attacked anyone unless I have been attacked first. But this second attack that could have killed me enraged me, and I decided to take revenge. I kept a hundred yards or so behind the car, just out of his line, but prepared to jump forward if he was forced to stop at a traffic light. This happened when we got to Westwood Boulevard. Silently – my bike was almost silent – I stole over to the driver's side, intending to break the window or scratch the paint of his car as I matched him. But the window was open on the driver's side, and seeing this, I put my fist through the open window, caught his nose, and twisted it with all my might; he shouted, his face was full of blood when I let him go. He was too frightened to do anything, and I rode away, feeling that I had done nothing as his attempt to kill me had warranted.
Shortly after this heartbreaking encounter, Dr. Sacks found himself in an almost identical incident while driving in San Francisco on a deserted road. An aggressive driver suddenly appeared out of thin air and, traveling at 90 mph, deliberately forced the motorcycle off the road. What happened next reveals Dr. Sacks as a kind of gentle giant, deeply human in his rage and superhuman compassion:
By some miracle, I was able to hold the bike upright, kick up a lot of dust, and get back on track. My attacker was now several hundred meters ahead. Anger more than fear was my main reaction, and I grabbed the monopod from the luggage rack (I was very passionate about landscape photography at the time and always travel with a camera, tripod, monopod, etc., bumping into the bike). I waved it around in my head, like a mad colonel riding a bomb into a terminal Dr. Strange love. I must have looked crazy – and dangerous – because the car accelerated. I sped up too, and pushed the engine as hard as I could, and started overtaking it. The driver tried to throw me by driving in the wrong direction, suddenly, or changing from one side to the other of the empty road, and when that failed, he took a side road suddenly in the small town of Coalinga – a mistake, because he entered the road of small roads with his tail and finally got stuck in a cul-de-sac. I jumped off the bike (all 260 pounds of me) and ran toward the trapped car, raising the monopod. Inside the car I saw two young couples, four people who were scared, but when I saw their youth, their helplessness, their fear, my fist opened and the monopod fell from my hand.
I shrugged, picked up the monopod, got back on the bike, and rocked it. We all, I think, had the fright of our lives, we felt the approach of death, in our foolish, potentially fatal battle.
On a tripfor the reasons stated here, it remains one of the most moving books I have ever read. Study this passage with Jane Goodall on empathy and Brené Brown on the crucial difference between empathy and compassion, then revisit Oliver Sacks on storytelling and the curious psychology of writing, the paradoxical power of music, and this final farewell to a beloved science storyteller.
