“When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi does not need my
review. It is a bread and butter book whether I say it is or not. I don’t normally read biographies or
autobiographies, because I have a difficult time connecting with a plot – the
bread, the foundation of the story is somehow too squishy and moist to be
substantial enough to hold any butter, any intricate language. Kalanithi has made me reconsider that
statement and made me wonder why I never considered life itself a plot.
Kalanithi’s story made me feel small, insignificant but only
in a way that forced me to see that no matter how hard we try, no matter how
intelligent we are, no matter our intentions for humanity, death is a reality out of our control. Cancer can and has beaten the best of
us. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t
try to fight it and it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t live our lives to the
fullest, do the things that make us want to live. If a man dying with cancer can still operate
as a neurosurgeon,
those of us without a debilitating chronic disease have no
excuse to not live the life we want to live.
Kalanithi said, “The tricky part of illness is that, as you
go through it your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what
matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit
card and I was having to learn how to budget.”
I think it is important for us all to consider this, whether ill or
healthy, discover what matters, and then focus on it, do something about it,
whether it is trying to make a change or encourage growth – if we don’t find
what matters – it may die, we may die.
Kalanithi spent his life searching for meaning – the meaning
of life, the meaning of death, and the meaning of the human mind – and how they
all intersect. I don’t know if he ever
came to any concrete conclusions, but he led me to the conclusion that each of
us matters, that we each have meaning of our own, and our personal meaning can
give meaning to others.
Kalanithi’s life is the plot of this book. It is captivating to read about his
experiences as a neurosurgeon and equally heart warming and heart breaking to
read about his struggle with cancer. The
language was butter, but it was the kind of butter that may have been in the refrigerator
too long – salty, but slightly off with the flavor of other items left in the refrigerator
too long – bitter and wanting, but fully knowing what it was. He wrote, “Because I would have to learn to
live in a different way, seeing death as an imposing itinerant visitor but
knowing that even if I am dying, until I actually die, I am still living” and
later “The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I
supposed to do with that day?”
What, indeed. What
are any of us supposed to do? I don’t
have the courage to face the answer to that question. I don’t know how he did and I certainly don’t
know how he lived knowing that “The curse of cancer created a strange and strained
existence, challenging me to be neither blind to, nor bound by, death’s
approach.” And yet somehow the fear of death didn’t overtake him. Instead, his desire to live prompted him to
carry on, to share his thoughts with us in this book, and to simply be.
And that is why the story made me feel small. It made me question this very thing – are any
of us living life fully? Maybe we can’t
until we realize that life could disappear from us at any moment, without
warning, without care, simply without. I
recommend reading this book as a prompt to help us realize how precious life
really is and start or perhaps continue our individual searches for meaning and
what truly matters to us.
