Quotes I liked:
Page 30:
"It wasn't high culture. It should have been funny, but it wasn't. However, it did make the throwaway assumption that the mind was simply the operation of the brain, an idea that struck me with force; it startled my naive understanding of the world. Of course, it must be true - what were our brains doing otherwise? Though we had free will, we were also biological organisms - the brain was an organ, subject to all the laws of physics, too! Literature provided a rich account of human meaning; the brain, then, was the machinery that somehow enabled it. It seemed like magic."
Cool quote because this random book his high school girlfriended recommended to him got him interested in the brain and its functioning and relationship with the mind, which got him into biology and neuroscience at Stanford undergrad, and eventually he became a neurosurgeon! Cool to connect the dots like that.
Also first quote I picked up in the book that made me think at a deeper level about my brain and body than I previously had. The relationship between the physical world around us and the world each of us lives in inside of our skulls is all because of our brains. Unfathomable to me that a collection of cells is able to achieve consciousness.
Page 70:
"Humans are organisms, subject to physical laws, including, alas, the one that says entropy always increases. Diseases are molecules misbehaving; the basic requirement of life is metabolism, and death its cessation."
Physics says death is inevitable and most humans live in denail of this. Learning to live while accepting this is important for making the most out of the days we are lucky enough to be alive. Paul exemplifies this in his writing.
Contrarian view: Humans create entropy, so for entropy to increase, human can't die. When human dies, less entropy (like if there were no humans, less disruption to nature). The question is about how you interpret entropy and what 'level' Paul wanted entropy to apply in making his point. I guess my interpretation is that humans create more entropy than the cells and molecules inside of them. I guess the entropy of the cells inside humans is what kills a human, and there is indeed no way to stop this.
Page 87:
"When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool"
Pen is mightier than the sword, in medicine too. Talking about when you have to have a conversation with a patient or their caregivers about whether an operation will do anything to truly improve life (give patient's life more meaning). Paul spoke a lot about this in his book. Conversation with surgeon has forever lasting effect on how patients family will remember the death of their loved ones.
Page 115:
"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving"
Paul's take on how to live your life. Take the life you are given and make the best out of it.
Page 125:
"therein was the paradox: like a runner crossing the finish line only to collapse, without that duty to care for the ill pushing me forward, I became an invalid"
Talking about how much sicker he felt after he confirmed his terminal disease and stopped working at the hospital. Made me think about how much our mental state has an effect on our surroundings. If you are surrounded by positive people, probably feel more positive even if you are going through a really tough time, and vice versa. In college, never felt as hungover as you do after you graduate, even though you may have partied more frequently, more aggressively while at school. This could be because everyone around you did the same thing, everyone was fighting a collective hangover together. Three months later out of school, your body hasn't physically changed much, but reacts so much differently because of the surroundings (and mentality) it has adopted to.
Page 131-132:
"Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn't really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live."
Yet there is no other way to live. Humans are not programmed to be able to rationally think about death. Paul grapples with this in the book, and grew to be able to live with it. Makes you scared, but valuable to think realistically about death, and then make sure you are living the life you want to be living at all times.
Page 169:
"The problem however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning - to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge."
Very deep insight. Makes you think hard about what you believe and how that fits into the world around. He goes on to say 'no system of thought can contain the fullness of the human experience.' Everyone experiences the "truth" from a different viewpoint, no one will ever be able to see the whole picture.
Page 180-181:
"Once again, I had traversed the line from doctor to patient, from actor to acted upon, from subject to direct object. My life up until my illness could be understood as the linear sum of my choices. As in most modern narratives, a character's fate depended on human actions, his and others. King Lear's Gloucester may complain about human fate as 'flies to wanton boys,' but it's Lear's vanity that sets in motion the dramatic arc of the play. From the Enlightenment onward, the individual occupied center stage. But now I lived in a different world, a more ancient one, where human action paled agaisnt superhuman forces, a world that was more Greek tragedy than Shakespeare. No amount of effort can help Oedipus and his parents escape their fates; their only access to the forces controlling their lives is through the oracles and seers, those given divine vision. What I had come for was not a treatment plan - I had read enough to know the medical ways forward - but the comfort of oracular wisdom."
Thinking of life as the sum of all choices leading up to the present is how I like to think too. This comes from Paul thinking about how he is losing the ability to influence his life with his own choices as the cancer progresses. He goes on to talk about what he wanted out of his oncologist (Emma), her oracular wisdom, guiding his life now that he could not. Understanding that we are presently able to have influence (and should exert influence) on our lives in something to reflect on, as we can never know when this gift will be taken away.
Thoughts:
Very well written, quick book. Paul wrote extremely well. Reading was easy and smooth, felt like having a conversation with Paul in my head. Paul wrote this book duing the final months of his life, fighting a terminal cancer. The manner which he accepts death and its finality, while continuing to live while he could was powerful and showed through throughout the book. More so, reading his thoughts on having a life with meaning helped spur reflection within myself, trying to understand my deep desires like Paul did. Paul taught me that it's important to live a life that has meaning, and to always strive for something. I learned from Paul to not dread hardships that I will have to face, but to accept them and work within the circumstances I am placed. Fear of dying cannot keep one from living.
It was also interesting hearing about the thoughts and feelings he dealt with during his time as neurosurgeon in residency at Stanford. For me personally, never have had to think about a job like he describes his. While someone may work long hours in finance, nothing compared to the real impact Paul was able to have with his passionate, intense work.
Overall I enjoyed the book and have recommended it to my friends.