Paul Kalanithi What Makes Life Worth Living Essay

The question surrounding this book is, what makes life worth living? What happens when you the road you planned stops at a dead end? How do you come back from that? Do you just ´go with the flow´ or swim against the tide? For every person the situation is different, whether it be a small decision or a life-changing one. Dealing with life´s curve balls, at times can be frightening, but it is all about how one visualises himself and his goals. One's approach to a situation determines his outlook on life. One factor that made Paul Kalanithi perception change was when he made the transition from a doctor to a patient during his treatment for stage IV lung cancer. He started to realize how hard it was to be obedient to the doctor’s orders and follow procedure. With Paul fresh out of training to be a neurosurgeon, it was difficult for him to grasp the fact that he might never again get the chance to perform in the OR. “Torn between being a doctor and being a patient...I struggles, while facing my own death, to …show more content…
As he faced death, he knew that his time on earth was limited. He also knew that it would be how people remembered him. First, he had to decide what was the most important to him. Paul thought, “Like my own patients, I had to face my mortality and try to understand what made my life worth living” (139). In order for him to not give up, he had to ‘stop and smell the roses’. To him, it was the little things that made him not give up. One way was to start writing books. He loved literature, and in fact, he graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor of arts and Master of arts in English literature. He hinted at this when he said, “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” (148). At this time in his life, he needed the motivation and courage to continue