When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Drowning, even in blood, one adapts, learns to float, to swim, even to enjoy life, bonding with the nurses, doctors, and others who are clinging to the same raft, caught in the same tide.

Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.

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.