Book Review: When Breathe Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi

Don't get through life without reading this book.

What will you do when you know you're about to die?

A lot of us think about this as some hypothetical questions. It belongs to those categories of questions like, what will you do if you become the President? What would you do if you had all the power in the world? These are genie questions.

There's one thing, though: we're all going to die. Someday.

For Paul Kalinithi, it came to him at the age of 36. He was a Doctor who had reached the peak of his career. He was a top doctor in his organization. One day he began to feel pain, and after some treatments and many diagnoses, he discovered he had cancer. He was going to die soon.

Paul narrates all of this from the perspective of a doctor. As a doctor, he has helped people enter life (through birth) and has guided people out of this world painfully. When you think about it, death should not have confused him. But it was. Theories make sense when we apply them to others, but when it comes to our lives, they rarely hold up to our expectations. His world was shattered. Nothing in his history could prepare him for the new reality of dealing with death. Through his ordeal, one thing he constantly thought about was meaning. What's the meaning of life? What's the meaning of his life? What's the meaning of everything?

This was his struggle. And that's why he wrote this book.

He did not write so much as an answer. He wrote it as a questionnaire. He wanted to think in public. To express the thoughts that clouded him in his final days.

In the first part of this book, Paul Kalinithi shares his family history. Growing up in a town near a forest, falling in love with a girl nearby, going to school, and leaving for college. He shows us the character and fear of his mum. His mother was a mover. For instance, she completely changed the school system because she wanted the best for her son. Paul didn't set out to become a Doctor. He never fully knew what he wanted to be. He just kept going, jumping into his passion as he went along. He decided to become a doctor after realizing that being a doctor would allow him to deal with the biological and physical processes that make up the human. Paul had always loved literature. In literature, he had found a world where he could dwell. As he read, he came to see the world in his way. At some point, he considered being a writer. Sadly, being a doctor took over his life until he was diagnosed with cancer. That's when he had to go back to his first love. The result is this book.

So, what does Kalinithi says is the meaning of life? It seems the answer is not as clear as we would want. The answer is unclear because there's not supposed to be a clear answer. The world is like clouds; everyone has to look on their own to see the image that comes from their mind. We're sure that there's definitely meaning in this world. What we cannot do is show others their meaning; each has to make their own as they grow up. Each has to forge his place in this world.

Although he grew up in a Christian family, he abandoned his Christian faith throughout his school days. It was many years later that he returned to the faith. His questions about atheism are poignant. CS Lewis had once said that atheism is too easy. He was right.

In such a complex world, atheism, science is too easy an explanation for the complexity of human existence. Atheist love to pitch religion as battling with science. This is wrong. Albert Einstein alluded to this in a letter he wrote to a student. He explained that science and religion are not even in contest. Anyone who sets them up to be in a contest does not understand either of them. Religion exists to provide answers that only the human heart and mind can comprehend. What does science have to say about love or death or meaning? Science does not care. It is not supposed to care. But religion is built around these things. In fact, religion exists for these things.

Before his cancer diagnosis, his marriage was on the brink of collapsing. However, as soon as he found out, every problem they had with his wife vanished. They gave birth to a daughter; he said a reminder to him of the process of life, birth and death. In the final pages of the book, he wrote a profound tribute to her that is worth reading;

Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters—but what would they say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.

That message is simple:

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

The family will always be everything.

This book moved me to tears and deep reflection. It is the sort of book that stops you in your track. You think about it for days, and it changes your life forever.

Don't get through life without reading this. You need this book for perspective on this journey. We are lucky, Paul Kalinithi writes beautifully, you will not be bored.