When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

The mere idea of death shakes us. It casts a shadow, turns the world upside down, rattles the stage of our ambitions, dreams, hopes and aspirations. We don't even like to think about it. But ultimately death is the only surety in life. Our conscious effort to drive away the idea about our mortality is what we mean by life. The biggest commonality around, still we, still aware of the failure to do it, try not to know or remember about it in our own context. Paul can see it creeping towards him. It is so near that he has been touched by its shadows. The lifeful bright sky over him is losing to the deadly spell. Soon it will be dark. He will cease to exist as others and he himself recognizes himself the pioneer in neurosurgery and possibly its future as a science to deal with unresolved ailments of the brain. He will cease to exit. The consolation can be that he will be part of everything. As per medical science, his domain as a neurosurgeon, it's just months away. There is no hope. Not even in its most hypothetical form. He is but forcing himself to live. To live till his last breath. Life acquires a focus, a meaninful precision, a surety as the finish line looms just a hand away. As the dark Angel creeps towards him, he decides to live. To live substantially. Intensely. He wants to remember the idea of life more than the fact of sure death. Before his body is snatched away at its prime, he decides to jot down the meaning of life. A favour done to lesser mortals like us. In writing this book on his deathbed, he turns Saint Paul. Read it. You will know how fissiparous life can be. Yet how meaningful it is meant to be at the same time. He turns dying a mere phenomenon. And life still bigger one. Read it and you will love yourself and your situations more than you do now. 

RIP Paul. You are an angel now. And part of a better world.