When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Literature not only illuminated another’s experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection.

I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved.

Maybe, in the absence of any certainty, we should just assume that we’re going to live a long time. Maybe that’s the only way forward.

The main message of Jesus, I believed, is that mercy trumps justice every time.

I was neither angry nor scared. It simply was. It was a fact about the world, like the distance from the sun to the earth.

Maybe I’d been cursed by a Greek god, but abdicating control seemed irresponsible, if not impossible.

And even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder. Some days, I simply persist.

Graham Greene once said that life was lived in the first twenty years and the remainder was just reflection.