I recently read When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016).
My top takeaways:
Ø The Forward written by Dr. Abraham Verghese is some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read.
Ø I could never be a physician.
Ø Diseases are simply molecules misbehaving.
Ø Quality of life has everything to do with quantity of life.
Ø Words are just as important as scalpels in the surgeon’s tool chest.
Ø Statistics are humans, too.
Ø The easiest death is not necessarily the best death.
Ø Death, like life, is process more than event.
Ø The physician’s duty is not to return patients to their “old” lives, but to keep them living for their “new” one.
Ø Bereavement is but another phase of marriage.
Ø The fundamental question: How do I live a meaningful life?
My favorite quotes:
“Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?” (p. 71)
“Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering. Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving. Describing life otherwise was like painting a tiger without stripes.” (p. 143)
“Yet I returned to the central values of Christianity—sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness—because I found them so compelling. There is a tension in the Bible between justice and mercy, between the Old Testament.” (p. 171)
“The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.” (p. 171)
You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” (p. 224)
This book was required reading for my oldest granddaughter as she was completing her undergraduate degree (as part of her capstone project). She recommended it to me. I am thankful for that, on multiple levels.
