When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family, ideally with a doctor as a guide, to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?

In these moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador.

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.

Talk tha talk!