When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?

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?

I was searching for a vocabulary with which to make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining myself and inching forward again.