Mortality: When Breath Becomes Air

I finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi about a week ago, but I needed some time to think before I started writing. I first heard about this book on NPR, and was immediately intrigued by the circumstances surrounding its creation. Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013 and wrote this book before his death in 2015.

Around the same time I heard about the book, my best friend's uncle passed away from brain cancer. While I didn't know him well, it was a devastating loss for my friend, and I realized only after his death the extent of his personal and professional impact on countless individuals. He truly made the world a better place, and reading about all of his contributions and accomplishments in his obituary forced me to wonder about my own legacy and question how I might be remembered.

So in the months between hearing about the book and actually reading it, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about death and loss. I expected the book to be about confronting one's own mortality, but was surprised to find that it was really more about life. As it turns out, Kalanithi spent his entire adult life pursuing this great question: how do we make life meaningful?

Like many who have taken on this great question, Kalanithi began with the simple profundity of nature. Here he describes dawn at Lake Tahoe: "No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, 'Let there be light!' You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur" (34).

This "specklike existence" hits me every time I think about the vastness of the universe. Sometimes it makes me feel like I am a significant part of something bigger, and other times it makes me feel inconsequential. It is that tension, I think, that drives us forward in our quest for understanding.

The "struggle toward the capital-T Truth," as Kalanithi puts it, often seems impossible. However, he writes, "In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture. [...] 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" (172). At the end of his life, it was his family and friends that brought him the most comfort, joy, and peace. Any time I begin to question or explore my own spirituality, I too am always brought back to these personal relationships. Can we all agree that kindness, forgiveness, and love are the universal principles in all religions?

One unexpected detail from the author's life is that his undergraduate and Master's degrees were actually in Literature, which of course I found intriguing. He weaves quotations from classic literature throughout his musings, using great authors and thinkers to justify or add to his own philosophy.

When Kalanithi was first diagnosed, he wrote to a friend, "The good news is I've already outlived two Brontes, Keats, and Stephen Crane. The bad news is that I haven't written anything" (221). It is a good reminder that many great artists and writers lived in times of war, plague, and high infant and maternal mortality rates. Perhaps they wrote as if they were racing the clock, crafting masterpieces before they were thirty. Now, we have the luxury of expecting eighty or more years, and so we take our time, "finding ourselves" in our twenties, growing careers and families in our thirties. We put off our "bucket lists" because we believe we will have more time later. But what if later never comes? Kalanithi was diagnosed just as his residency was ending. The career he worked tirelessly for was never realized. His first child was only eight months old when he passed away.

Despite this harsh reality, his wife writes in the epilogue, "Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning" (219). His dedication to living a purposeful life, even at the very end, is what I found most inspirational.

I don't have any sage words of wisdom to end with, except to say that I think we can carpe diem by making time for things that are truly important: going on a date with your spouse, finding shapes in the clouds with your kids, or asking Mom to teach you how to make her famous lasagna. We can't all be neurosurgeons, we can't all save the world, but we can all seize these moments that make our lives meaningful.

Courage: The Nightingale

I've been thinking about The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah a lot lately, even though I read it in 2015 (the same year it was published). It was easily the best book I read that year, and it is the first book that comes to mind when people ask me for recommendations.

The Nightingale is about two sisters living in France during World War II. Each is a member of the Resistance, and each is courageous in her own way.

The younger sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious teenager who becomes famous for smuggling Allied soldiers out of France. Her risks are great, she saves many lives, and her bravery is obvious and admirable.

However, it is her older sister's story that resonated more with me. Vivanne is a wife, a mother, and a school teacher. Her life quickly falls apart when her husband is sent away to war, she loses her job, her Jewish neighbor is "deported," she agrees to raise her neighbor's son as her own, and a German soldier moves into her home. The things she must do to protect the children are absolutely heart-breaking and demonstrate that courage comes in many forms.

The personal conflict between Isabelle and Vivianne is complicated, but is illustrated succinctly when Vivianne finds out Isabelle is secretly dating a communist:

Isabelle had always been impetuous, a force of nature, really, a girl who liked to break rules. Countless nuns and teachers had learned that she could be neither controlled nor contained. But this. This was not kissing a boy on the dance floor or running away to see the circus or refusing to wear a girdle and stockings. This was wartime in an occupied country. How could Isabelle still believe that her choices had no consequences?

Hannah is a talented writer and captivated me from the very first page. She really made me wonder what kind of person I would be in this same situation. Would I ignore my convictions and work with the Nazis in order to protect my family? Would I be the quiet resistor like Vivianne, doing what I must for my family? Or would I be Isabelle, willing to risk everything to do what I think is right?

I would love to say that I'm an Isabelle. Don't we all want to be Isabelle? Growing up, whenever I would read about the Civil Rights Movement or the Holocaust or slavery, I always believed that I would have done "the right thing." It's easy to think so when you've never actually been tested. The truth is, the majority of people who lived through these times were mostly concerned will self-preservation, and refused to get involved in struggles that didn't directly affect them.

In Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans, Eric A. Johnson argues that it took the entire German citizenry to allow the Holocaust to happen: "The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference."

One thing I do know is that now that I am a mom, I would do anything to protect my kids. I cannot imagine knowing that all I have to do is feed some soldiers information in order to feed my starving children. I also cannot imagine knowing that I could save the life of the neighbor boy, but at the risk of my own child's life. Maybe none of us can say for sure who we would be in that situation until it is thrust upon us.

So I may not know the extent of my courage right now, but I would like to make this pledge: I will not look away when I see injustice. I will speak up when something is not right. I will hold my leaders accountable for their actions. If we all try to be guided by our conscience and not our fears, perhaps good will prevail.