I have read this book for the month of November and I don’t regret choosing it. For there I am too.

By Paul Kalanithi

There are going to be times in life when death steals the people that you love most and even those you least love. The slap death strikes are of the same force though we may feel it differently. When “he” scoops into your life along with grief one of his close family members, they swoops in and descends hungrily and heavily and leaves you feeling empty.

And at those times, it can be hard to get out of bed and open the curtains; to let the light in. It can be hard for you to fill your empty belly when your seemingly empty mind is stormed by thoughts and questions that can never be answered. 

It can be hard to leave the house and speak to people; to let the world in …. so hard to let the consoling words in. It can be hard to know how to go on living when the person you love could not. Hard to see the point in moving forward without them by your side. But there is one certainty in life. As much as there is life there is death too and one day it will steal you too.

When Breath Becomes Air is a book written by a determined young star. He wrote and asked “What is life worth living in the face of death?”

At an early age, he became a neurosurgeon and did well in his profession. Age had not taken him for a long road trip before he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. When life was at its best. He had a good job that he loved and a beautiful wife that he cherished. It is coincident that one day he was the most dependent doctor helping the dying to revive and the next thing we know, he was a patient struggling to live. 

It brings me to wonder, what makes life worth living when even after doing all that is good, death still grabs you away? 

Romans 14:8 (NIV)

“If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or we die, we belong to the Lord”

Some annotations I got from Paul Kalanithi are

1. What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?
2. … What makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end?
3. Death comes for all of us
4. The words of hope first appeared in the English language about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire. 
5. If the weight of mortality does not grow lighter, does it at least get more familiar? 
6. What are you most afraid or sad about?
7. Life is not about avoiding suffering. 
8. Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still, it is never complete. 
9. It (death) can be as uncomfortable as it is peaceful, both communal and lonely like death, like grief – but there is beauty in all of it, and I think this is good and right.
10. You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.