The second August book-of-the-week was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. It was so good (and I was so free) that I finished it Wednesday. It was a moving and bittersweet look at what makes life worth living in the face of imminent death. I cried at the end.
Kalanithi meditates on many things: dying, living, medicine, literature, family, cancer.
Regarding medical school, he writes, "You would think that the first time you cut up a dead person, you'd feel a bit funny about it. Strangely, though, everything feels normal." This is exactly the content I signed up for - astute, somewhat jarring, insider thoughts on a process I never intend to experience. There is no way I'm going to be a surgeon or coroner, and thus a vanishingly small likelihood that I'll ever cut into somebody (dead or alive). But I'm infinitely curious, and interested in what makes people go, biologically as well as psychologically. When Breath Becomes Air is a good window into a mysterious world.
There was, of course, a lot about death: presenting it as a doctor, accepting it as a patient, rejecting it as a young person, trying to understand. He writes, "The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live." Like many others, Kalanithi comes to realize that we're all dying, just some faster than others. And that's okay. The trick is to live life while you've got it to live, or, "knowing that even if I'm dying, until I actually die, I am still living."
xo,
Devo
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