Charles Kelman: Real Life Is Boring

Charles Kelman was an ophthalmologist who looked at cataract surgery and thought there had to be a better way—which led him to invent phacoemulsification and basically change the whole field. But he was also a jazz musician and a scuba diver and just fundamentally couldn’t sit still with the status quo. I think that’s what the title’s about: that the baseline version of life, the one where you accept things the way they are, is genuinely boring. You need the restlessness, the refusal to settle, or you might as well be asleep.