When Breath Becomes Air
The privilege of direct experience had led me away from literary and academic work, yet now I felt that to understand my own direct experiences, I would have to translate them back into language. Hemingway described his process in similar terms: acquiring rich experiences, and retreat to cogitate and write about them. I needed words to go forward.
--Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
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Hello, this is Part 2 of 'Meditation on Med'. You are going to hear a quite personal reading of a great book When Breath Becomes Air.
When Breath Becomes Air was written by the late neurosurgeon Dr Paul Kalanithi, who discovered he had had a late stage cancer during the last year of his residency. He wrote about why he chose to study medicine, neurosurgeon in particular; the lengthy and demanding training. He wrote about the peculiar nature of neurosurgery, an operation of the brain, which requires the patient to answer: what makes life meaningful enough to go on living. The diagnosis of lung cancer put Dr Kalanithi in a place of a patient and forced him to think about this question, and to take action to pursue what was meaningful to him at the end of his journey.
Like most of the readers, it was an eye-opening experience for me to get to know some knowledge of neurosurgery, and it was heartbreaking but at the same time inspiring to read Dr Kalanithi's story. But it is Dr Kalanithi's take on writing, or literature, that touches me the most. I love when he talked about he wanted to get to the junction where medicine, morality, and literature intersect, which is profound for me, who recently changed career path. I love when he quoted Hemingway to highlight the need of 'translating experience to words'. It is literature, or writing, or things that are not science-bound, that makes this book happen. It has encouraged me to think about what role literature can play in my life - a companion that guides and consoles me, a tool that helps me to cogitate and to understand.
So, be aware this is not your usual book review; rather, it's a meditation of jobs, calling or not, and the meaning of life, whatever elusive form it takes.
Music
Girl from Ipanema by Getz/Gilberto
Cemetery Gates by The Smith