part of his body, and lost both his eyes. At the time of the Grand Prix, he was a walking horror, with a disfigured face and long flap of skin hanging from the side of his neck to his body. As the 12th - - In Celebration of Being Alive Page . Suddenly, I realized that these two children had given me a profound lesson in getting on with the business of living.
Because the business of living is joy in the real sense of the word, not just something for pleasure, amusement, recreation. The business of living is the celebration of being alive. . I had been looking at suffering from the wrong end.
You don’t become a better person because you are suffering; but you become a better person because you have experienced suffering. We can’t appreciate light if we haven’t known darkness. Nor can we appreciate warmth if we have never suffered cold. These children showed me that it’s not what you’ve lost that’s important.
What is important is what you have left. Christiaan Neethling Barnard was born in rural South Africa in to poor parents as their fourth child. He evinced great interest in his academics and was determined to pursue medicine, after the loss of his brother to a cardiac ailment. He won many scholarships and pursued his higher studies specializing in cardiac surgery.
As a cardiac surgeon, Barnard focussed on congenital and complicated cardiac conditions for which there was no cure at that time. After experimenting with heart transplantation on animals, he performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant in the year . He gained worldwide recognition and went on to develop many surgery techniques, which are being adopted till date. Barnard has penned fourteen books and scientific articles that have been published in reputed journals.
Some of his books are, ‘One Life’, ‘ Ways to a Healthy Heart’, ‘The Best Medicine’ and ‘The Faith’. A pioneer in cardiac surgery, he obtained a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Cape Town. This was followed by honorary doctorates,