When Breath Becomes Air had been on my reading list for a while, but it wasn’t until about a week or two ago that I finally picked it up and began to read it, thanks to my dad.
Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s memoir not only details the chronology of his life as a student, neurosurgeon, cancer patient, husband, and father, but also strikingly illustrates his ruminations on the meaning of life and death — something he had been particularly fascinated by since his youth, and something he had to directly and ineluctably come to terms with upon his stage IV lung cancer diagnosis at the age of 36.
Quotes that made me think and my takeaways
Choosing to work at Sierra Camp over a research center
Heading into his sophomore summer, Dr. Kalanithi applied to work as an intern at the Yerkes Primate Research Center and as a prep chef at Sierra Camp, and ultimately chose to work at Stanford Sierra Camp.
“I was eager to go to Yerkes and see what could be the natural origin of meaning itself. In other words, I could either study meaning or I could experience it.”
Looking at the stars above Fallen Leaf Lake, hiking the trail leading up to Mount Tallac, and through the conversations and friendships he’d formed at Sierra Camp, Dr. Kalanithi felt that “every day felt full of life, and of the relationships that give life meaning.”
About two years ago, I actually also applied to work at Sierra Camp. I had mixed feelings. Around SSC recruitment season, almost every toilet stall on campus had a letter stuck on its door, written by former counselors who had the best time of their lives, had life-changing experiences, or both, thanks to their magical summer. I was very much drawn to the idea of a capital F-U-N summer spent in nature, surrounded by other Stanford students and cute little kids. On the other hand, I wasn’t so sure if babysitting alums’ kids for 10 weeks was how I wanted to spend my summer. How meaningful, helpful, or contributory would that be to society and to my endeavors, compared to working at a government agency or non-profit organization?
Upon reading about Dr. Kalanithi’s choice to work at SSC over the research center, I felt tentatively inspired. In a culture that values productivity and “resume-building” over “having fun” and “experiencing life,” I think that it can be very brave, and even somewhat revolutionary, to choose to do something like working as a prep chef at a summer camp over working as an intern at a scientific research center. But I am also hesitant to accept the notion that studying the meaning of life (symbolized by working at Yerkes) and experiencing life (symbolized by Sierra Camp) are mutually exclusive. Couldn’t he study primates during the week, then spend the weekend hiking and swimming?
Now I feel like I’m overanalyzing and picking apart a story that was meant to be more symbolic, so here is my take away:
Assuming that I accept the dichotomous relationship between studying the meaning of life and experiencing life, one would be wiser to — and I would rather — choose to experience life (and concomitantly learn the meaning of life).
Experiencing life makes life meaningful.
Job vs. Calling
“by the end of medical school, most students tended to focus on “lifestyle” specialties — those with more humane hours, higher salaries, and lower pressures — the idealism of their med school application essays tempered or lost. […] Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But that’s the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job — not a calling.”
Reading about Dr. Kalanithi watching his classmates choose to go onto “lifestyle” specialties, I couldn’t help but see the resemblance between what he saw in med school and what I am seeing right now as an undergrad (and what I am worried about potentially becoming as a law student or lawyer). It would be more unfair to characterize dermatologists or plastic surgeons as products of “sell-out culture” than software engineers at big tech companies and investment bankers, but both phenomena involve the choice between a lucrative, more “comfortable” career and a less financially rewarding but presumably more morally rewarding career. (Of course, there are exceptions in all of the careers I mentioned, and the act of “selling out” depends on many factors like the person’s financial situation, long-term career goals, original intentions, and so many others besides just the job title.) I entered college with the impression that most of my peers were pursuing their education with the goal of finding a calling, not a job. Looking for a job—rather than a calling — is not bad, wrong, or inherently morally inferior (of course not!) but I would be lying if I said that I did not feel disappointed at times.
“Moral duty has weight, things that have weight have gravity, and so the duty to bear mortal responsibility pulled me back into the operating room.”
I recognize that my pursuit of a “calling” comes from a place of privilege. I also see many peers who “sell out” from a place of privilege, and many peers who pursue their calling precisely because they know what it is like to live without privilege. Sometimes, I worry that I am being naïve. Most times, I’d rather stay naïve, if naïveté must be a necessary condition for pursuing a “calling.”
On God and Metaphysics
“About God I could say nothing definitive, of course, but the basic reality of human life stands compellingly against blind determinism. Moreover, no one, myself included, credits revelation with any epistemic authority. We are all reasonable people — revelation is not good enough. Even if God spoke to us, we’d discount it as delusional.
So what, I wonder, is the aspiring metaphysician to do?
Give up?
Almost.
Struggle toward the capital-T Truth, but recognize that the task is impossible — or that if a correct answer is possible, verification certainly is impossible.”
Hence why I remain agnostic.
To nurture a new life as another fades away
“Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?”
“Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” I said. Lucy and I both felt that life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.”
In the epilogue, Dr. Kalanithi’s wife Dr. Lucy Kalanithi writes that When Breath Becomes Air is, in a sense, unfinished, due to his rapid decline. I found it all the more fitting that the very last paragraph of the memoir is addressed to his daughter Cady, to whom the book is dedicated:
“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.”
I wondered how my dad felt in picking up this book and recommending it to me, himself a two-time cancer survivor. There are so many things that I simply didn’t know and still do not know because I was too young to understand what it meant for my dad back then, and now that I’ve grown older since my dad’s diagnosis and treatment, I am too scared to retrospectively comprehend how close he was to facing a fate similar to Dr. Kalanithi’s.
I’m glad that I read When Breath Becomes Air, a beautiful, poignant love letter to life and what makes life meaningful, during a time when I often find myself oscillating between gratitude and discontent.
My main takeaway:
Never, ever take life, or the people and things that make life meaningful, for granted.
