“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.” -Paul Kalanithi
Paul Kalanithi was thirty-six years old and had almost finished a long and arduous road of training as a neurosurgeon when he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He went from being the doctor treating dying patients to the patient who was dying.
This beautiful Pulitzer Prize finalist shares Kalanithi’s progression from young medical student concerned with “the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” to neurosurgeon at Stanford and lastly to a new father and terminal cancer patient.
Kalanithi’s journey is poignant and introspective. He shares his insights into difficult questions such as “What makes life worth living in the face of death?” And “What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away?”
Paul Kalanithi died before he finished this book but he entrusted a friend to finish it for him. Before he died he said, “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything. Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on,’”
If you’re looking for a book worth your time, you can’t do any better than this book.
Content Advisory: Death, cancer, suicidal thoughts