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Being Mortal Atul Gawande Analysis

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Self-Reflection on Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Adno Gatah
St. Catherine University
Due: November 16th, 2017

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the issue of mortality and discuss perspectives from Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End that resonated with this me. I will reflect the issue of death in the context of my religion and Somali culture while identifying perspectives that resonated with me in the Gawande’s book. Naturally, end-of-life issues are religiously, emotionally, and culturally charged topic. As Islam teaches, everyone shall taste and face death. In a sense, the way we and those we love die (comma) is of great individual importance. For Muslims, life is sacred because God is its origin and its destiny. Death does not happen except by God’s permission, as dictated in the Qur’an.
Death in the Somali culture is also viewed as a natural transition from one state to another. It is believed that the life on earth is a test, (semicolon) the afterlife is where you will “face the actions on earth good or bad in front of God” (Sheikh Abdulrahman, personal interview, October 20th, 2017). So a life close to Allah (doing good deeds) on earth could mean an afterlife close to Allah as well. In a …show more content…
In fact, it prompted me to self-reflect on my values and beliefs about death and led me in the development of a personal advance directive. As I worked on the advance directive, it was evident that I had values and views of how I want to die in the event of the end of life issue. Autonomy is a strong personal value of mine as outlined in my advance directive. Difficulty but essential value for me is to determine a course of action in matters related to end-of-life decisions rather than my family making it for me as outlined in my advance

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