“Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”
This is how Paul Kalanithi, a brilliant neurosurgeon and a gifted writer, describes his experience of facing stage IV lung cancer at the age of 36. In his memoir, he chronicles his journey from being a doctor who treats the dying to being a patient who struggles to live. He reflects on the meaning of life, death, and identity, as he confronts his own mortality and the loss of his future. Kalanithi wrote with honesty, eloquence, and courage. Here are seven lessons that I learned from this book:
1. Life is not about avoiding suffering, but about finding meaning. Kalanithi shows that suffering is inevitable, but not meaningless. He writes, “Even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.” He found meaning in his work, his family, his faith, and his writing. He challenges us to ask ourselves, “What makes life worth living?” and to pursue our passions and purposes with vigour and joy.
2. Death is not the enemy, but the natural order of things. Kalanithi reminds us that death is not a failure, but a fact. He writes, “Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. Here we were, finally face-to-face, and yet nothing about it seemed recognizable.” He accepted death as a part of life and prepared for it with dignity and grace. He teaches us to face death with honesty and humility and to cherish the preciousness of life.
3. Faith is not a crutch, but a source of strength. Kalanithi reveals that faith is not a blind belief, but a reasoned conviction. In his words, “The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.” He reconciles his scientific and spiritual views and finds comfort and hope in his Christian faith. He inspires us to seek and find our own faith, whatever it may be, and to live by it with integrity and compassion.
4. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it. Kalanithi exemplifies that courage is not a lack of fear, but a control of it. He writes, “I was neither angry nor afraid. It simply was. It was a fact about the world, like the distance from the sun to the earth.” He faced his diagnosis, his treatment, his prognosis, and his death with calmness and clarity. He encourages us to be brave and resilient and to overcome our fears with reason and faith.
5. Legacy is not what we leave behind, but what we live for. Kalanithi proves that legacy is not what we leave behind, but what we live for. He writes, “That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when 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.”
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