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When Breath Becomes Air PDF Book by Paul Kalanithi
- Book Name: When Breath Becomes Air
- Authors: Paul Kalanithi
- Pages: 228
- Genre: Autobiography
- Publish Date: 12 January 2016
- Language: English
When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi, I started it the day before yesterday and finished it yesterday evening and I have not
when I would stop thinking about it and just really wanted to share it with you and to invite you all to read it too and so just a little bit about this book
this is a nonfiction book it's very short about Paul who was a pretty brilliant man
had a whole host of different degrees from very prestigious universities and went through
this of medicine track ended up to go into neurosurgery and neuroscience at the age of 35 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and this book is about him dealing with his upcoming death
so it's pretty hard topic already but as you guys know normally difficult topics don't really hit me all that hard but this book hit me really hard I cried three times
when I was reading it and I cried twice in public I cried in my office at work over at lunch and I cried in the gym
so yeah it was it was a pretty strong staff um so a little bit more about it just in general and I think that the voice and that Paul
writes with is really strong and I think for me it was quite a sort of impactful because he has a mix of really enjoying
English literature and really drunk science it's a relatively relative combination of interest that's one that I certainly share and very interesting to see
how he was relating the sort of philosophy of literature to the sort of scientific method and speaking about those two things in tandem and
how he was reconciling his need for logic and order with his need for the sort of emotional aspect of literature
I think he wrote about his experiences very well and I think that he did a very good job at putting across exactly what was happening and the way that
he was feeling at certain times and I think what made it such a hard-hitting bit for me as
it deals with one of my like deepest fears which are not lung cancer but it's the concept of a conscious death
so just to explain a little bit more it's always been something that sort of fascinated me and like makes me feel a bit weird at the same time
it's one of the reasons why I'm always really interested in cearĂ¡ pillars and in the experience, their victims must have when they're aware that they are essentially helpless to death that is being fed to them by a third party
I used to write to prisoners on death row who had a very similar kind of experience yes obviously they have done bad things
but they're in a situation where they're facing their death it's either set with a date or it's unsure you don't know where the appeals are going to go through
but you know that you are going to die in the near future and this book kind of touched on it too I think it was particularly impactful
because the individual obviously understood his death very well and you can sort of tell how really that makes no difference
I think there's a little bit that needs to be said about me and death and my philosophy of death in general and to explain a little bit more about this for you it's gonna differ from everyone and obviously
I recommend it um but it will probably make you think a fair bit so just for me personally
I never really used to be afraid of dying no that's there's not even completely true
I didn't really understand how people could be afraid of dying as you know
I was quite unwell for quite a long period of time and to me it was far scarier to imagine getting up in the morning and going outside than it was to imagine just not being anymore and so
I've sort of come to the concept of mortality kind of linked so it's something I'm exploring in my 20s as opposed to really my childhood
when most people sort of doing experience it and sort of come to terms with their mortality
so as I got better it was a very odd sort of transition between death being kind of a close friend to something to run from or something to try and ward off that was never something that was in my mind previously and the concert of dying one day was something
I welcomed I didn't fear it and I don't think I am sort of terrified of dying now I think it is an eventuality
I think it's a certainty and I tend to think of it as the opposite of before you were born that that's the way that makes it make sense to me you know
there's no stress or worry or pain or confusion around where you were before your abortion and so it's just the same like you're not going to be there anymore I believe in sort of religion or spiritual aspect
so I just figure it's just a non-existent state the same way as it was previously but there is something about that state in between and that
I find it really powerful to read about really powerful to try and understand and to communicate with people
who is in that space where death is imminent but not the certain sort of time-wise and it's how to deal with the fact you know you have a very limited amount of time left
but not exactly how much time you have left because I think if you if you sort of know if you have it
if you have a date and the people have written to on death row you have been put to death when they're going to date they tend to gain quite a lot of acceptance and the fear goes away essentially
it's something that's going to happen and they only really seem scared again the day before but up until that point they are relatively calm about it but I think it's the expectation of it that freaks me out
so going back to the book again and I pretty much haven't stopped thinking about it since
I finished reading it and the way it sort of plays into my own relationship with death and I just think that's brilliant and it's by far the best non-fiction book
I've read it this year and tentatively at the moment it's a bit early to say but it may be the best book
I've read this year it's so fresh and as you can tell I'm still kind of shaken up about it
so I am going to need to give it some time but in terms of emotional impact yeah it's definitely the most emotionally impactful book that I've read this year
tell me if you read it down below tell me if it had a similar sort of effect on you or if you're interested in reading it then again please comment down below.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH
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