When Breath Becomes Air

There are moments when a person feels the pull to look directly at death. This book met me in one of them.

What moved me most was Kalanithi’s own path. As a young man he was drawn to philosophy and literature, certain that thought alone could lead him to an understanding of what a life is for. In the end he chose otherwise, becoming a neurosurgeon, stepping into the real and fragile lives of his patients rather than only reasoning about them from a distance.

His account of moving from attending physician to patient, from the one holding the chart to the one wearing the gown, reads with a rare honesty.

I often treat death as something far away, and in doing so forget to hold onto the present. A life lived in a hurry may carry little meaning of its own. Still, I am grateful today for a body strong enough to keep taking part in this world, and a mind soft enough to be touched by the lives of the people in it.