I wanted my first article on this new “home” to be a special one and that’s why I have selected Paul Kalanithi‘s book as the main topic.
“When Breath Becomes Air” is a special story that changed my perspective on living a meaningful life and enjoying every moment, no matter what feeling I have. I don’t want to have any regrets if something happens and my life would have to end in a few months, weeks or maybe days, how it was Paul’s case.
I’ve always admired doctors. Since I was a little kid, I remember I was often waiting for our family doctor to perform the home visits, for the regular checkups. She would always let me play with her instruments and explain to me how they work. For a long period of time, I wanted to study medicine, and at some point, dentistry seemed very interesting to me, but during high school, I switched my plans and preferences to the side of social sciences.
However, today I don’t want to talk about my dreams from childhood and “what I wanted to be when I grow up”. Instead, I want to present you a very inspiring book I have read this year, “When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi and some personal thoughts I had, while reading it.
This book is the memoir of the talented neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi that was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer in 2013, while he was in the middle of his successful career and family life. Beyond the fact that he was a successful neurologist, P. Kalanithi was also an amazing scientist, which followed postdoctoral research in neurosurgery, after completing his residency training.
Furthermore, there are no wonders that he published this book because he was also an amazing writer who obtained two degrees in English literature from Standford, and along the book, we discover that he was thinking seriously about pursuing writing as a full-time career.
“As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn’t done studying. I applied for a master’s in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion.
A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans—i.e., “human relationality”—that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced—of passion, of hunger, of love—bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats. At Stanford, I had the good”
Bill Gates: “The best nonfiction story I’ve read in a long time”
I bought the book a couple of months ago because I saw positive reviews on Goodreads, and I knew for sure that a story of a person diagnosed with terminal cancer will touch my soul in a very special way, as various family members of mine faced or are facing, right now this disease. Here, I am including my father…who, died in 2003.
Together with Paul’s memoir I also bought several business books, which caught my attention at that time more than this one. I had a couple of months during which, I read only business-related books, and while reading an article on Bill Gates’s blog “Computers are for girls, too”, I found out his recommendation for Paul Kalanithi’s book. At that moment, after reading the article I was hit by “Wait, I have this book…I completely forgot about it”. I started reading the book on that day and this is how 4:00 AM in the morning caught me aware, still devouring the book. I feel asleep for 2-3 hours, and the second day I couldn’t wait to continue reading about Kalanithi’s journey. For three days constantly I carried the book with me and used to read it while taking the tram, on my way to work, until the end of the book, caught me in tears.
A Beautiful Mind
I still remember how touched I was by every page of the book, and some pages are still staying around my head, even these days. After seeing my dad fighting with terminal cancer while a was an 8 years old kid that didn’t realize too much of what happened, now I could understand better, what happened at that time and which are the procedures that my uncle is following right now. It was painful to read, but at the same time, it was eye-opening.
Another reason why I enjoyed the book, it was because I could discover the world of neurosurgery more. A couple of years ago, I saw a Korean TV series featuring the story of a neurosurgeon, with zero empathy for humans, and I can still remember the detailed surgeries I saw back then. By the way, the TV serial is called A Beautiful Mind. 🙂
“I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.”
Paul brought me not only on his journey as a doctor but also as a patient. I had an emotional challenge when I discovered that Paul’s wife, Lucy, was expecting a child, close to the moment she heard the news about his husband disease. However, there were two other intense and sad moments.
The first one, when P. Kalanithi was next to his wife for the delivery but too affected by the chemotherapy to hold his newborn daughter.
The second and deepest moment, while reading Lucy’s epilogue written after P. Kalanithi’s death. That epilogue left me in tears and in a difficult moment when I didn’t want the book to end.
The meaning of life. Above and beyond.
After reading “When Breath Becomes Air” I had some deep thoughts running through my head for a few weeks. It made me realize how many times I skipped enjoying moments together with my family and friends, because of trivial things.
In the search for more knowledge and experience, I understood that I also need my personal time, to spend it with my family and myself and that I shouldn’t feel bad. I still struggle with the lack of sleep and having a healthier lifestyle, because I am trying to work, to learn many things from school and other projects. And this is an area I want to focus on the next year. It will be difficult to make new habits, but I want to give my best.
“In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.
Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them…”
I can have endless talks about this book, but I will try to stop around these 2000 words. The last but not least thing I want to mention is that I just discovered that Paul Kalanithi’s wife, Lucy had a very inspiring talk, at TedMED. There are 15 minutes you would want to listen to in a moment of silence and think twice about how are you living your life.
Right now, I just can’t stop admiring Lucy and her strength. Every time I watch her delivering this talk, it makes me think about my mother. I see both of them as a hero.
And my question to you: Are you living your life to the fullest?
