How Will You Die, Young Man?

I am walking the path toward the main building of my Donetsk Medical Institute — one of a thousand ordinary mornings, the kind you don't know to remember until years later, when it is the only one you remember at all.

Professor Feldman, head of the Department of Physiology, is walking toward me from the other direction. I straighten a little, the way students do, and offer the expected courtesy: "Good morning, dear professor."

He does not return it. Instead, a sly smile crosses his face, and he asks: "How will you die, young man?"

I do not flinch. I understand him. With every step, every lecture, every heartbeat between us, there is less time left to live — his, mine, everyone's — and so his question is not morbid at all. It is simply accurate. It is, perhaps, the only entirely honest greeting one person can offer another.

That is the essence of life: it is being spent, continuously, whether or not we notice the transaction.

I am grateful to him for that reply, and for so many mornings like it. It was Professor Feldman, more than any textbook he assigned, who taught me to measure life not by its length but by its use — and to live mine, from that morning on, with the greatest dedication I could manage.

More stories from the "People" section can be found in the corresponding articles in the Index section.

Mykola Iabluchanskyi