#paulkalanithi

[hahagoodie]

Fyi, ini buku fiksi pertama yang ibu beli loh hehe Jaman masih berdua dan mulai bosen sama bacaan yang ada di rak buku 😃 buku ini dipilih random aja pas lagi jalan ke Gramed Pejaten. Lha jadi curhat nih sahabat 😅 Novel tentang menjalani hidup secara hidup. Ini kisah nyata n penulisnya meninggal waktu buku ini masih dikerjain. #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #newyorktimesbestseller #fiction #fictionbooks #kolpribukukitanih (at Jl.Kebagusan 4 Pasar Minggu Jak-Sel) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8d-zhig2uz/?igshid=1uh2pc6lbleca

[okamicyes]

WHEN BREATH BECOMES air - PAUL KALANITHI I don't want to review this book because this book has a space in heart forever. . . . ( I read this book about two years ago, sometime i reread this book when i feel stuck or hopeless. This book taught us that life is too short to worry, to give a fck or chasing people. Just live your life the way you want, keep going for your goals because we don't know what future waiting for us, we don't know we alive or dead so go for it) . . . . . . #book #books #read #bookish #bookrecs #bookrecommendations #booklover #bookreads #paulkalanithi #whenbreathbecomesair #live #lifeisshort https://www.instagram.com/p/CbHw92WrVyo/?utm_medium=tumblr

[subwaybookreview]

Nicole: “This book was given to me by a doctor. He’s really cute. Right now he’s doing his residency in Vermont but I guess you could say we’re dating. He’s going to be a radiologist and the story is about a doctor who’s diagnosed with cancer. It’s really beautifully written. I’m going to see him this weekend and we’re going to have a book discussion. It’s such a crazy, full loop experience because my brother has a terminal neurological illness. He is 33 and has spinal cancer. Since I’m in the backstory, I’m ok reading the book so far, but I know the end is going to hit close to home.” @nicolemaeadams #WhenBreathBecomesAir #PaulKalanithi / @theubc for #subwaybookreview #newyork 🗽 (at G Train)

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

When Breath Becomes Air: How to Live a Life of Meaning from the Point of View of a Neurosurgeon Dying from Lung Cancer

Note on the text: I used Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air as published by Random House in 2016. 

Paul Kalanithi was a student of neurosurgery at Stanford who was diagnosed with, and even died from, a severe form of lung cancer. The title of his autobiography come from the first two lines of Caelica 83 by Fulke, as quoted on the introductory page: “You that seek what life is in death;/ now find it air that once was breath” (Introductory page). These lines really helped elucidate the central theme of the book: what makes life meaningful?

When ever since he was a child, Paul was an avid reader of books and had seen scores of authors attempt to answer this question, with varying degrees of success. But he didn’t think about it too deeply, especially in terms of the brain, until he was a student at Stanford, studying English, and encountered a book entitled Satan: His psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr Kassler, J.S.P.S. by Jeremy Levin, a book which he otherwise hated. However he was intrigued by the book’s assertion that what is called mind is just another function of the brain. Kalanithi says that it was 

an idea that struck [him] with force. . . . Of course it must be true- what were our brains doing otherwise? Though we had free will, we were also biological organisms-the brain was an organ, subject to the laws of physics too! Literature provided a rich account of human meaning; the brain, then was the machinery that somehow enabled it. It seemed like magic (30). 

It was then that he decided to started taking classes in neuroscience and biology. Eventually he decided to pursue post graduate studies as a neurosurgeon. However he always saw what he he was doing in the medical field as the practical application of the various philosophies of life that he had encountered. It was only in “practicing medicine that [he] could pursue a serious biological philosophy” and see where it was that “biology, morality, literature, and philosophy intersected” in the creation of a meaningful life (43, 41). 

It’s clear that he sees brain, meaning the organ itself, and mind, the more philosophic “thought center”, as being intricately linked together, and that both serve an important function in the process of creating a meaningful life. He continuously comments on how “the brain mediates our experience of the world” and how any damage to the brain forces people to ask the question “what makes life meaningful enough to go on living?” (71). Yet the brain itself isn’t enough. In order to create a meaningful life, we must move beyond the realm of that physical organ and into the more metaphysical world of mind. In the aftermath of his diagnosis, Paul became very aware of this fact. Despite all the knowledge he had regarding what his body was going through, he needed to dive into the deeper realm of mind in order to be able to really understand, much less much express to others, what he was going through. What it was like to know that you are dying and how that affects you. So he dove back into literature and read “anything written by anyone who had written anything about mortality. [He] was searching for a vocabulary with which [he could] make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining [himself] and [begin] inching forward again” (148). Although it helped for him to understand what his body was going through as a physical organism, it wasn’t enough. He needed the words to describe what he was going through as an individual, not just as a generic man-with-cancer. He thought in a similar way regarding the brain and mind and their ability to help us live a meaningful life. 

We need both our minds and our brains. Brains live in the world of science, of facts, of universal laws that can be understood and that are adhered to by more or less everyone. Minds exist in a world of subjectivity and personal opinion, and even “if a correct answer is possible, verification is certainly impossible” (172). No one really knows why Suzy loves Joey instead of Stevie. It’s a mystery. Ultimately both viewpoints offer valuable insight and neither has the answer all on its own. Science offers us the best way to learn about the physical world, including the brain, and how it works, by giving us the “most useful way to organize empirical reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue. Between these passions and scientific [theories] there will always be a gap. No system of thought can contain the fullness of human experience” (170). In other words, science’s strength lies in the fact that it can explain tangible, related, and universal facts, which is incredibly important, but in doing so it misses an incredible important part of the human experience which is the subjective experience of the individual: 

The problem however eventually becomes evident: to make science the arbitrator of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, [and] meaning. . . a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to believe that science provides no basis for meaning and therefore life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight” (169). 

So you need to understand both physics and metaphysics, you need both a brain and a mind, in order to figure out how to live a life that is meaningful. 

The truth is that the business of figuring out how to live a life that is meaningful is a tough business to be in precisely because 

your values are constantly changing. You figure out what matters to you and then you keep figuring it out. . . . . You may decide you want to spend your time as a neurosurgeon, but two months later you may feel differently. Two months after that you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church (160-161). 

Ultimately how do we create meaning for ourselves? We make decisions. We at some point decide what is important to us and how we are going to live our lives, and we do this because we are, underneath it all, meaning-making machines. Kalanithi talks about how the uncertainty regarding how much time he had to live affected the way in which he viewed himself and was blocking him from being able to lead the full and meaningful life that he wanted. He did not know if he had enough time to go back and finish his studies, or if he should just focus on being a good husband and a philanthropic member of community and live as if he were going to die tomorrow. Until one day he made the decision that he was going to live his life as if he was going to life forever, and go back to serving people as a neurosurgeon resident for as long as he could. The way he describes it, somewhat humorously, is that he had gone through all the stages of grief just to arrive at denial: “And now, finally, maybe I had arrived at denial. Maybe total denial. Maybe in the absence of any certainty we should just assume that we’re going to live a long time. Maybe that’s the only way forward” (162). 

So what is it that makes life meaningful? Kalanithi doesn’t provide a definitive answer. After all he can only speak for himself. But there are a few things that he does know about making life meaningful. He knows that the brain is important in this process, as is the mind. But what is perhaps most important is that people can find life-fulfilling meaning in a variety of ways, in whatever they do. So not everyone may find it in neurosurgery like he did, others may find it in teaching, or simply finding ways to love the people around them, and that’s ok. All those ways are equally valid. Sometimes people can have the most impact, and can find that life-defining level of meaning, in ways that, to others, might seem insignificant, even though they really aren’t. Just look at the words he writes to his daughter Caty, who is too young to have any living memory of her father, at the close of the book: 

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of who 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. [And] in this time, right now, that is an enormous thing (199). 

Sometimes it will be in the small things that you find the most meaningful way to live your life, sometimes it’ll be in the big ones. Either way it is safe to say that both your brain and your mind will help you on the path to deciding what a meaningful life is to you and how to live it. 

[emysu]

Around Christmas time I often spend time thinking about the past year, what I learned, what I’m grateful for and what I hope to do in the year to come.  Today I started a little series of drawings, one for each book I’ve read this year.  Here are the first four. :)

[invictusdevgrp]

This book hits deep. I highly recommend reading/listening "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi. Death is a terrifying possibility. Paul reaches through the darkness of Cancer and dying to express how to best find meaning in life. I will never do this book the justice it deserves. .... #love #empathy #kindness #darkness #defythedarkness #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #death #cancer #cancersucks #books #writing #writer #audible #kindle #writtenword #beautiful #literature #lit #emotions #emotional #feeling #feelings #terrible #terrifying (at Madison, Wisconsin) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAySp6onOp2/?igshid=53yx2czwahdv

[mustafaokutan]

📸✒@fatimehilalerdogan #neokudum📖 "Son Nefes Havaya Karışmadan". #okurpuanim 10/10 #altınıçizdiğimenanlamlicümle✏ . 👌 "Kusursuzluğa ne kadar yaklaşırsanız yaklaşın asla ulaşamazsınız, ama yaklaşmak için hiç durmadan çabalayacağınız sonsuz bir hedefe pekala inanabilirsiniz." . 🌱 Paul Kalanıthı beyin cerrahi ve yazar olan bu muazzam insanı okumak ufkumu açmakla birlikte kafama tokmak yemiş gibi hissettirdi. . 🌱İhtisas ve algoritma derslerinde bir not vardır ki bu not kitapta da yer verilmiş. "Günler uzun, yıllar kısadır." . 🌱 Kitapta Cerrah olan Paul'un gerçek yaşantısını okumak beni derinden sarstı çünkü sevdiğim birkaç kişiyi "Kanserden" kaybetmenin üzüntüsünü tekrar yaşadım daha doğrusu hissettim, ağladım.😢 . 🌱 Biyoloji, fenni, edebiyat, ölüm ve yaşam bir kitapta toplanmış mücevher gibi. Bu yüzden ölüm herkes içindir. Yaşayan nefes alan her canlı organizmanın kaderidir. Kitabı okumam için canım komşum @ssaliha.ozdemir73 ablama çok teşekkür ederim. Harika bir deneyim ve yolculuktu..🙏😘 . 🌱Bu hassas dönemde sevdiklerinden ayri geçiren sağlık çalışanlarımızı, doktorlarımızı, hemşirelerimizi bir fiil sahada hizmet edenleri yürekten alkışlıyorum. Iyi ki varsınız. Sizler "Beyaz Meleklersiniz"...😇🙏 . . #paulkalanithi #sonnefeshavayakarismadan #okudumbitti📚 #kitaptavsiyesi #kitapokumak #iyikikitaplarvar📚 #booklover ❣ (Basınevleri) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAYEEndJqkL/?igshid=dd0sstvqdd6q

[jamanddoughnut-blog]

This makes me want to curl up in my bed and cry forever.

[booksgaga-blog]

Today I opened this book again and read the first few pages. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon, is going through his own CT scan and sees 'the lungs matted with innumerable tumours'. How much time does he have? Very little. 'When Breath Becomes Air' is a beautiful account of a brilliant doctor preparing to deal with his own death and also making the most of his limited days. . . . #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #bookstagram #books https://www.instagram.com/p/B94tw43lYsq/?igshid=fzbn1c0o6qmc

[ciaomichaella]

#book 7 in the #20booksin2020 #challenge #WhenBreathBecomesAir by #PaulKalanithi I had been wanting to read this book for years ever since I saw #LucyKalanithi on #GoodMorningAmerica https://youtu.be/jWVIsS7-8D4 It wasn’t until yesterday that I finally got my hands on it at the library. I confess, it was hella triggering because years later, watching my dad die of #cancer remains the most difficult and painful thing I’ve gone through in life, and something I’m still struggling to deal with. I finished the book awhile ago tonight and I am still crying as I type this post, like full on #uglycry too. How fitting that I’m posting this on #WorldCancerDay You bet your ass I am NOT reading Joe Biden’s book about the #death of his son next. Chelsea Handler’s book was a lot about death too and I don’t think I can handle another one so soon. Luckily I have Stormy Daniels’ book and Khloe Kardashian’s book in my bag, those should give me some distance from death for a little bit. #cancersucks #stupidcancer #effcancer #20booksin2020challenge #booksofinstagram #booksofinsta #booksofig #reading #memoir https://www.instagram.com/p/B8LRORInggO/?igshid=16wboyg59aji4

[hermusesblog]

✨Hello everyone, it's The last day of the #readingrush challenge. This is a picture of a recreating a book cover (I hope so lol). . . . . . . @thereadingrush _____________________________ #readingrushtbr #readingrush #readingrush2019 #rrdoublecover #reads #bestreads #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #bookworms #algerianreaders #readersofinstagram #elibrary #epubbooks #bookstagram #bookcovers #dzreaders #books #bookish #bookstagramfeature #iread https://www.instagram.com/p/B0eawzhB5hR/?igshid=1rr3wg3adz11x

[boyslovers69]

How to survive blackout #blackout #how #survive #books #book #📕 #manga #dictionaries #candle #readingunderthecandlelights #read #reading #bookworm #twoboyskissing #davidlevithan #whenbreathcomesair #paulkalanithi #thedeadfather #donaldbarthelme #anna #josteingaarder #howtogetfilthyrichinrisingasia #mohsinhamid #leséroilesdesidimoumen #mahibinebine #znuděnkrásouhnusu #henryspencer #神の子どもたちはみな踊る #村上 春樹 #afterthequake #murakamiharuki #nguyễnnhậtánh #ngồikhóctrêncây #đảomộngmơ #conchónhỏmanggiỏhoahồng #về #tungtăngvàođời #giađìnhnơiđểyêuthươngvàđượcyêuthương #thisbookisgay #junodawson #howtobeagentleman #johnbridges #thinhânviệtnam #onepiece #onepieceyellow #eiichirooda #ワンピース #尾田 栄一郎 #chúchogácsao #takashimurakami #星守る犬 #stargazingdog (at Mesto Touskov)

[weld-el-hay]

#whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi #books #bookstagram #aviation #airtrafficcontrol

[forevermore2013]

Forever grateful for your words, Paul Kalanithi. Thank you. I look forward to the biggest hug when I see you in heaven. #mustread #whenbreathbecomesair #paulkalanithi (at McKinney, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuiPj-xAMx761qeoSDMSDFxtqiZTcTFJVTRY3k0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=njbxl29adcz1

[dog-earedthoughts]

You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.

Paul Kalanithi, When Breathe Becomes Air

[shareyourwords-blog1]

When One Book Change My World

Somehow, the night is getting darker, colder, and more quiet for me.

That feeling when you’re really alone, against all odds.

Not remember precisely, but surely I know, after finish reading that book, my world became faster and senseless.

The only book that has a many folds to mark a best sentences that sharply piercing my heart time after time (usually I’ll never leave any marks to all my books). Seriously, how can I be stuck with one book on my early morning train, an afternoon train, an emergency room when I got a night shift, a bed, a dining table, until under a tree blowing in wind.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. That’s a book that change my perspective, even my life. Are you curious about that book --who can change a woman like me?--

This book tells about Paul Kalanithi, at the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon. He was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. You can imagine that? One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. So, the questions are: what makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? And this book carries the urgency of racing against time, of having important things to say. He wanted to help people understand death and face their mortality. Dying in one’s fourth decade is unusual now, but dying is not. Paul’s decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude. His strength was defined by ambition and effort, but also by softness, the opposite of bitterness. He spent much of his life wrestling with the question of how to live a meaningful life, and his book explores that essential territory!

“The way forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d spent time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day?”

Paul made me realize that should not only people with terminal illness who asking those questions. But, all of us. Cause who the hell knows at the young age (like us) with many comfort zone among us, including all of our dreams will crash instantly and appearing with the same question: WHAT WILL YOU REALLY DO?!

What’s your next step?

I’m getting so emotional to myself to asking that tho’.

And honestly, I regret so much. To not made a brave decision, to worry about what others think, to waste my time doing a meaningless thing, and to being afraid to make a step.

There’s no much time left, Sarah. Sometimes overthinking ruins you, makes you worry, and makes everything much worse than it actually is.

Now, 10:14pm at my room, I made up my mind to live my life to the fullest!