What makes a person? | When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi

Reading autobiography books has been the main theme of the genres I have consumed this year. I haven't read a lot since I went back to this hobby turning habit now, but, my love for quiet times spent reading had by far increased, so here's a progress I should acknowledge.

Two weeks ago, I bought a copy of Paul Kalanithi book When Breath Becomes Air, it was mentioned on the top list of a fellow bookworm I looked up to. So I was curious, what makes this literary work so worthy of reading? A remarkable review on the cover of the book says "Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option." — The New York Times. And it is true, I haven't (even it's just only a week yet) forgotten how a life can be both beautiful and short-lived at the same time. Maybe, a factor that adds to it is that I am fascinated in philosophy and science, that my post-reading activities have been pondering about what I really want to do in this life and reading state-of-the-art diagnosis and treatments of cancer.

A brief summary of the book

Paul was a neurosurgeon, a great and good one, who was diagnosed of lung cancer at the height of his residency. Paul when he was a child was convinced that he would be a writer in his later years but chose medicine as his profession to answer his questions about finding the meaning of life, death, and the things in between. His book was about his love for literature, his curious mind in answering big questions, and his cruise in battling his sickness.

A life that is both beautiful and short-lived

How do we measure our lives? Is it by the number of years we've lived, the quality of the days we've experienced, the people we've met, the line of trophies and list of awards credited to our names, or some other measures. I believed that Paul's life was somehow described by those things in the length of his life here, although, there are things only he knew that made his life more profound than how I knew him through his book. We, you, yourself will have the last say about the kind of life you're currently living or when the time comes that you're nearing to the end, you'll have the last say about the kind of life you've lived.

Something so good that I took from this book is that I'd rather live the kind of life that is full, the one with quality days, the one that is spent with things that are intangible and with values that are almost impossible to measure. In Paul's early years of pursuing his career, he found himself in this fork: spend his internship in Yerkes Primate Research Center or be a prep chef at Sierra Camp on the shores of Fallen Leaf Lake. He chose the latter, with no regrets, he experienced things such as the beauty of nature (in the form of lakes and mountains) and of people (the friendship and conversations shared).

Rest is necessary

Often times, when we look forward to grand future, we forget about how we're living in the present. In my experience and the people around me, who spend most of their time studying and working until late hours and even sometimes consuming the precious weekends. We forget about the value of rest in the equation. Hard work is an ingredient but it does not completely makes the ship afloat. There are a lot of things to consider and it was emphasized in the book how little value we put into the work that rests do to us. On some pages, I thought, if maybe his journey was less competitive and less demanding, he wouldn't get sick. But I'll never know if that would be true, I'm just a reader after all.

Things were put into place

When a person comes to me and tell he's dying of cancer, the last thing I'd say would be "things are being put into place". However, Paul's writing simply told his story in this way. I found it so beautiful that his dream and somehow plan of being a neurosurgeon for a few years and spend his latter years as a writer would really happen. In his last two years, he was writing the manuscript for this book. Although a chunk of his memoir were series of downs, I was getting more hopeful as I read through the pages. It wasn't the kind of hope for a miraculous healing because his scans show progress in his tumors, but it was the kind of hope that brings stillness in that raging storm of fighting cancer. He was a great fighter, surrounded with people, who became his strongest support. It would have been so difficult to journey sickness with Paul as he is a doctor himself, but his wife (also a doctor) and his oncologist were not only the right but also the best people he had in his situation.

There are so many things I've learned in the short time I've read this book, things that I'm still pondering about. There is richness in his storytelling. The richness of meaning, experience, and conversations he shared in those pages. It would be a loss not to read this book and I hope, if you ever come across this post, you would be interested in giving it a chance.