What I infer from the title is that while we are living, we are someone—an individual with an identity.
And then, when life ends, we become part of something much larger: the universe.
Breath is the individual. Air is the universe.
When Breath Becomes Air is the memoir of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. He writes about his life, his medical journey, his illness, and his changing understanding of life and death.
I picked up this book because we lost our father to the same illness.
I was also intrigued by Kalanithi himself—a neurosurgeon with an MA in English Literature. Perhaps that combination explains the detailed yet simple expressiveness of the book. He brings the perspective of both a doctor and a patient to the same subject: mortality.
My favourites
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” — Seven words from Samuel Beckett that say so much.
And:
“I began to realise that coming face to face with my own mortality had changed nothing and everything.”
Some books give you answers.
Some make you question what you thought you knew.
And some simply make you pause and look at life a little differently.
This was one of those books for me.
