6 Amazing Life Lessons from When Breath Becomes Air

What I got out of the bestselling book When Breath Becomes Air was not at all what I expected when I began reading it. And that is not at all a bad thing!

The premise revolved around the writer, Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer just as he was entering the final year of his neurosurgery residency at Stanford. I am not sure what I expected out of the book. But it was along the lines of an answer to the question many of us ask – “what is the meaning of life?”.

Instead, the book took me on a journey through Paul’s life from growing up, to attending Stanford as a neurosurgery resident, to becoming a cancer patient who must deal with his own mortality.

The first half of the book deals with his life before he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. While the second half deals with his life after he is diagnosed with cancer.

It is cruelly ironic how this brilliant young man, who was about to help so many, was stricken with terminal lung cancer just as his career was about to take off.

Unlike many other autobiographies I have read, coming up with takeaways and life lessons required deep introspection and reflection on my part. While Paul does share many words of wisdom on the meaning of life, I believe the greater value that he provides is that he simply shares his thoughts, feelings, and questions as he goes along. It is then on you the reader to connect the dots and extract meaning from it.

6 Most Important Lessons from When Breath Becomes Air:

(1)  Death is Inevitable

After receiving his terminal diagnosis, Paul reflected:

 “I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.” ¹

For me, this made me think that the amount of time we all have left isn’t as important as what we do with the time we have left.

(2)  Our Values Can Change

One of my favorite parts of the book was when he was discussing values:

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out…You may decide you want to spend your time working 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.“ ¹

I believe that as we go through life, our values are constantly changing. What is important to us changes as we pass through different stages of our lives. And there is nothing wrong with that, we change, people around us change and our priorities change – it shows that we are evolving and growing.

(3)  Sometimes You Need to Follow Your Heart

After his diagnosis, Paul’s health improved for a while after getting on the proper medication. Not knowing how much time he had left, he was left with a decision – should he return to his residency position?

Several of his professors had advised him against doing so, asking him: “Shouldn’t you be spending time with your family?”

Ultimately with the support of his wife and family, he decided to go back,

“That morning, I made a decision: I would push myself to return to the OR. Why? Because I could. Because that’s who I was. And because I would have to learn to live in a different way, seeing death as an imposing itinerant visitor but knowing that even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.” ¹

The takeaway for me is that sometimes you just need to go with your heart and do what you think is right, despite what others say. In many situations, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers.

(4)  With Joy Sometimes Comes Pain

After his terminal diagnosis, and still not sure how much time he had left, Paul and his wife wrestled with the idea of whether or not to have a child.

Eventually, they decided to go ahead with the idea as they both agreed that “life wasn’t about avoiding suffering”. Paul then followed that up with one of my favorite lines in the book:

“After so many years of living with death, I’d come to understand that the easiest death wasn’t necessarily the best.” ¹

The takeaway is that sometimes to experience joy, we must endure some pain.

A little later in the book, he shares a tear-jerking message that would be given to their infant daughter on his behalf when she was older, which to me shows he and his wife made the right decision:

“When you come to one of the many moments in life where 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.” ¹

The final two lessons learned came from the epilogue, which was written by Paul’s wife Lucy.

(5)  Focus on the Present, Plan for the Future

After being diagnosed with his terminal disease, Paul insisted that Lucy remarry after he passed. He also worked hard in his remaining days to secure the best possible future for her and their baby daughter, financially and in other respects. At the same time, Lucy worked hard to secure his present and to make sure she did whatever she could to make his present the best it could be.

The lesson here being the importance of having a balanced time perspective in our lives by focusing on both the present and future.

(6)  Be Deeply in Love

Just prior to his cancer diagnosis, Paul and Lucy were having problems in their relationship and were on the verge of separation. In the epilogue, Lucy pointed out that she and Paul often joked to friends that one way to save a marriage was for one of you to become terminally ill.

She then added,

“Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.” ¹

While I am sure that is incredible advice for anyone dealing with a terminal illness, I will take Lucy’s advice from the last life lesson one step further. Perhaps one trick for all of us for managing our lives is to show deep love for everyone that we come into contact with by being vulnerable, kind, generous and grateful.

Imagine how great the world would be if we all lived like that?

Until next time…PYMFP!
–Rick

What Do You Think?

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References

¹ When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Lalanithi