When Breath Becomes Air

“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.