On purpose: New directions in life and health

Bornhealthy,mydaughter Julia contracted a chicken pox viruswhen she was an infant. Rather than causing a few days of illness, however, this virus attacked and destroyed her heart. Her only hope, and it was a long shot, was a new heart; without it, she'd last only a few months. In 1990, a scant number of children had received heart transplants, and there was very little data on what would happen to the ones who had. Given this uncertainty, one of the biggest decisions that my wife, Jeri, and I needed tomakewaswhether to even put Julia on a transplant waiting list. The alternative was letting her die in peace. It was an alternative worth considering—we had no idea what would happen if she were to receive a new heart. No idea what the quality of her life would be. We were on the front edge of this wave, and would be for Julia's entire life. We decided to list her for a transplant—in part, frankly, because we could not bear to watch her die. However, we were well aware that if she did get a new heart, we'd need to work incredibly hard to keep her well—to give her a big life. We'd also need to approach our life with her in a whole new way—in a way that assumed she might die at any moment. Julia received a new heart on Valentine's Day, 1991, and our lives were changed forever. She lived through many challenges, including a second transplant when she was nine. Her life was not easy by any stretch, but it was a big life. Friends, camp, softball, girl scouts, travel—experiences that many kids have, but that Julia never took for granted. This expression “took for granted” suggests that life and its experiences should be granted to you. However, the unexpected thing that happened to the rest of our family is that we stopped taking our own lives for granted. We stopped expecting a certain life to happen to us and instead started creating our own. This new outlook turned our lives turned from black and white into Technicolor. Personally, I started caring less aboutwhat people thought ofmeand more about what I thought of myself. As an assistant professor at a university, I started caring less about getting tenure and more about making a difference in the world. Most importantly, I stopped thinking