Living for Dying

To @潘多拉的书单  for your kindness and grace. 

After reading one third of this book, I decided to write my book review---and this my first English book review. The reason is simple: Paul has touched my head and heart. All the great books resonates the reader’s mind and soul, just like this one. Besides, his reflection about hisjob mirrors my thoughts about my job.

When breath becomes air

Paul, after reaching the K2 of academic peak , decided to become a neurosurgeon at the aim to help him explore his questions about life and death, morality and science, doctor and patient.

As a neurosurgeon, he stands at a unique and advanced ground to muse the life riddles obsessing him since childhood. Armed with the scalpel, Paul not only has a powerful weapon to protect the dignity of the human being and their family, but a scientific instrument to reveal the myth of Sphinx

Graveyard and hospital are my favorite places to think about life and death. Especially hospital, where smiles meets tears, joys meet sorrows, greetings meets farewells, odes meets elegies, which fueled Paul with rich experience to explore philosophy questions.

Thanks to his job, Paul was not only able to guided us amiably about his work ,but how us how he treated the patient: they were not data in the clipboard but a human being with their families around him. In this part, he kept throwing questions stirring us to think: Would you trade our ability-or your mother’s-to talk for a few extra months of mute life?What makes life meaningful enough to go on living? .The truth that you live one day at a time didn't help: What was I supposed to do with that day? If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?

On the second part, Paul’s role changed from doctor to patient unexpectedly. Such flick made him underwent through the psychological stage of usual patient went through, yet in a reversed way. However,his professional background and philosophy thinking enable him to cope with hiscancel gracefully.

Again and again, he urged me to review my work and life,

As a NGO worker, or humanitarian worker, we coped with the poor, the disadvantage and marginalized people, like patient to Paul. By witness suffering from those people, we fully understand that our work is not only to ease the sufferings, but to help them build a life with dignity.We realize that there’s a family stands behind every suffered person. And we devote ourselves to this career like Paul.

disaster relief work

While we share the happiness from the sufferings, we also face the pressure from our job. Philosophy thinking, which is intangible and untouchable, breathes fresh air and power and energy into our head and hands, like a stone for me to fight against Goliath. The better we understand the meaning and value of our job, the better we are able to  overcome misery and resist setbacks, tiredness, frustrations and failures. By thinking like Paul, you know exactly what you are doing and what it means, which like campus in this material-abundance and havoc world, navigating you to the end of your life decently.

the left-behind poor people 

I know it’s a little bite of weird to talk about philosophy in such scientific-and economic-lead world, but I do believe what Paul wanted to tell us by sharing his story is that we, as human beings, are not machines. Life has meaning for you, what you need is to calm down and listening to the calling of your life.