When breath becomes an Air

"When breath becomes an Air" is one of the most powerful book, I have ever read which is based on real life of a neurosergeon "Paul Kalanithi".

This book follows Kalanithi's journey from medical student, deciding what would provide a meaningful life, to neurosurgeon, who operates in the very centre of the human identity: the brain, before finally a patient with terminal cancer, as a new father.

This book has many amazing facts about brain & important things to tell us, as individuals and as a society.

1. The mind is simply the operation of brain. How the brain could give rise to an organism capable of finding meaning in the world.?

2.The book lies at the intersection of life, death, morality, and philosophy.?

3. V's Stanford lab that had become world leader in reading out brain signals but with his blessings Paul was embarked on a project to do the reverse: to write signals into the brain.?

4.lessons for residents- learn to be fast now, you can learn to be good later.?

5. Patients under anesthesia and during long procedures in OR their nerves can damage, muscles can break down, kidneys can fail. Residents have to make it very fast. Explained with the example of tortoise & hare.?

The tortoise proceeds deliberatly, with no wasted movements, measuring twice,?cutting once.?No step of the operation needs revisting everything moves in precise. If the hare makes too many minor missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins.?

6.As a resident, his highest ideal was not saving lives—everyone dies eventually—but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.

7.Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past.

8.“I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their labor.” -The Bible

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

Cease not till Death

Paul teaches us to be brave and to keep going on even when you can’t go on.