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A review by jennifer
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
5.0
I read this book because I've been thinking a lot about what work I want to do, and frankly I hoped an extraordinarily smart, relatively young man who was facing down his own death might have some advice. As it happens, Kalanithi made it clear his intentions aligned with my needs when he quoted from Montaigne at the beginning of Part II of this memoir: "he who should teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live."
From the start of the book, it's clear that Kalanithi is operating on a different plane of intelligence and achievement than most of us mere mortals. After graduating from Stanford with degrees in English literature and human biology, he dashed off to Cambridge University to complete a degree in the history and philosophy of science and medicine—a year he flies through in a single paragraph—before heading to med school at Yale. As he nears graduation from Yale, Kalanithi comments disapprovingly about some fellow medical students who wanted to remove the language about placing patients' interest above their own from their commencement oath: "This kind of egotism struck me as antithetical to medicine and, it should be noted, entirely reasonable. Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But that's the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job-not a calling."
Towards the end of the book, after he's been diagnosed with lung cancer but is still finishing his residency, Kalanithi describes some tasks he needs to finish: "I had to go see patients, organize, tomorrow's OR schedule, review films, dictate my clinic notes, check on my post-ops, and so on." I was so conditioned to Kalanithi's over-achievement at this point that I assumed he had somehow, shockingly, found time to be review movies while undergoing cancer treatment and completing his residency. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the type of films that radiologists read, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was moonlighting as a culture critic for The New York Times.
This is a man who held extraordinary standards for himself and yet, mercifully, he also had a sense of humor. Describing his experience with cadaver dissection in medical school, he says this: "Everything teeters between pathos and bathos. Here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos, and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito."
And while there is an awful lot of utterly admirable striving in Kalanithi's life—which is certainly a kick in the pants for those of us, like me, who have been a bit lazy about matters such as the work we do in this world—in the end it’s his humanity and humor that shine through. His extraordinary curiosity, and the follow-through on that curiosity is also an example worth emulating.
As he gets sicker, he comments about the difficulty of deciding on which burning curiosity to follow in his remaining precious time: "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. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with a terminal illness is a process." This passage summed up for me the lasting message of the book: for those of us who have more time, life is just a longer version of this process and it matters that we keep figuring out what matters to us and acting accordingly.
From the start of the book, it's clear that Kalanithi is operating on a different plane of intelligence and achievement than most of us mere mortals. After graduating from Stanford with degrees in English literature and human biology, he dashed off to Cambridge University to complete a degree in the history and philosophy of science and medicine—a year he flies through in a single paragraph—before heading to med school at Yale. As he nears graduation from Yale, Kalanithi comments disapprovingly about some fellow medical students who wanted to remove the language about placing patients' interest above their own from their commencement oath: "This kind of egotism struck me as antithetical to medicine and, it should be noted, entirely reasonable. Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But that's the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job-not a calling."
Towards the end of the book, after he's been diagnosed with lung cancer but is still finishing his residency, Kalanithi describes some tasks he needs to finish: "I had to go see patients, organize, tomorrow's OR schedule, review films, dictate my clinic notes, check on my post-ops, and so on." I was so conditioned to Kalanithi's over-achievement at this point that I assumed he had somehow, shockingly, found time to be review movies while undergoing cancer treatment and completing his residency. It took me a second to realize he was talking about the type of films that radiologists read, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was moonlighting as a culture critic for The New York Times.
This is a man who held extraordinary standards for himself and yet, mercifully, he also had a sense of humor. Describing his experience with cadaver dissection in medical school, he says this: "Everything teeters between pathos and bathos. Here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos, and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito."
And while there is an awful lot of utterly admirable striving in Kalanithi's life—which is certainly a kick in the pants for those of us, like me, who have been a bit lazy about matters such as the work we do in this world—in the end it’s his humanity and humor that shine through. His extraordinary curiosity, and the follow-through on that curiosity is also an example worth emulating.
As he gets sicker, he comments about the difficulty of deciding on which burning curiosity to follow in his remaining precious time: "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. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with a terminal illness is a process." This passage summed up for me the lasting message of the book: for those of us who have more time, life is just a longer version of this process and it matters that we keep figuring out what matters to us and acting accordingly.