While visiting with my English host, who teaches religious studies at an all-girls school in the UK, we bemoaned the truth together as we had both experienced it: that sharing one’s knowledge and actually teaching another person is not the same thing, but a difficult task indeed.

I toured the next day through the dungeons of an 800 year old castle, which caused me to consider all the years of persecution and judgement handed down to both the deserving and undeserving. And how knowledge wielded power.

Wandering through the prison-castle made me think of the inquisition, and the years that religion used a “dead language” spoken to their lay people; a language few could understand. Knowledge is understood to hold power for the ones with the knowledge, and can be exercised in punitive and paternalistic methods; or it can be valued for the enlightenment that knowledge brings and shared in an altruistic manner, with the realisation that knowledge should never be owned by a few.

You, my reader, must wonder by now what strange rambling road I have journeyed down! These days as I study amidst brilliant minds and return to academic pursuits, I am more than ever certain that we who have understanding and knowledge regarding the events that take place as the human body succumbs to disease and death have an incredible burden and responsibility to share this knowledge with others. In the ever-more complex and technologically advanced medical world, people need full understanding to make difficult decisions.

This means not speaking an unused language, but speaking truthfully and simply so that the things that happen “behind closed doors” are uncovered. That is to say: the “codes” performed to resuscitate already dead bodies; the treatments used to sustain life just a little longer; the burden of care and symptoms resulting from these treatments; the obvious spiral into decline and death from disease; the things that to the experienced eye herald the nearing of imminent death—medical personnel have in-depth knowledge about these aspects of end of life care and first-hand experience.

For all of us providing care in a complex health system: Let’s stop speaking Latin, instead let’s shine light and understanding and really empower people to make their own decisions. (This will require some changes in how medical information is shared, it will take extra time, and requires patience and practice.) Let’s put the power of decision making back in the hands of the person whom everyone is talking about. Let’s share knowledge so that understanding grows and enables true choice, by each and every person, for their own life…

“If you have knowledge,
let others light their candles in it.”

Margaret Fuller