Support the Sick

Hospitalized with a serious illness, a 55-year-old lawyer found himself taking stock. He’d gone to Ivy League schools, supported a beautiful family, ran a prosperous business, bought a second home on the coast. But what had he contributed? What had been the point of it all?

Lying alone in the stillness of the wee hours, he remembered that what he’d really wanted to do was become a teacher.

“So what do you do with that, when you realize a life has been spent in a way that wasn’t the best?” asked Jim Rawlings, who retired recently as head of Duke University Hospital’s pastoral services staff.

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