When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

Rachel | Academy of Allied Health, Grade 9

Rating: *****

Contemplating the deepest depths of mortality is a thought-train worse than death itself. Having completed a decade’s worth of neurosurgical training only to be diagnosed with stage IV cancer, Paul Kalanthi became all too intimately close with life-defining questions. He sacrificed all that he had for the position that was “a calling”. Deferring gratification until his life’s work was fulfilled, the clock had run dry by the time that Paul could experience joy. On his deathbed, he grappled with fear that his life was not worth living and he lost any autonomy to reverse that. In his chilling memoir, Dr. Kalanthi danced with a fate that he, as a doctor, could accept, but in the role of a patient, thwarted acceptance.

As ephemeral as life may be, Dr. Kalanthi lives on in his book. Probably the most difficult element of this book was that Paul didn’t write as a superior with a master’s in English and a doctorate in medicine but as a friend. The paradoxical nature of the book left the mind vying to answer the questions that Paul left unwritten. As much as this book weighed heavily on the mind, Paul Kalanithi best expressed one unwavering conviction that is most uplifting. “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.” It is a call to action for the reader to endeavor to live every day as if their last had dawned.