This was a beautiful, vulnerable, powerful meditation on life, death, mortality, and purpose. I had been recommended it by so many people, so I figured I would like it, but I didn’t anticipate how deeply I would love it. This book had me crying on public transit - it was so beautiful in its tragedy and it’s tenderness.

Paul is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who dreamt of being a writer, and when he was diagnosed with cancer in his late 30s, he faced his mortality, and through it, created this book. And what a book it is. 

Contemplative and lyrical, this was an unflinching and vulnerable work, as the author grapples with his mortality, his calling, his life, and his purpose. As a surgeon, he’s experienced with death, and has been around it from his early days in med school where they work with and dissect cadavers… but what changes when you’re actually faced with your own death? How do you live your life? How do you decide on a purpose, or choose what to do with the time you have left? Paul’s reflections were uniquely informed by his medical expertise, his love of literature, his faith, and his own perspectives, and I got so much out of his philosophies and his musings. 

This is a deeply sad book, as Paul was unable to finish it before his passing. However, an afterword by his wife adds just as much beauty and grief and tenderness to his work as his own words did. Despite the threads of grief and loss and sadness that permeate in this book, it’s not just a sad book. It’s a reminder to enjoy your life, and seek out your purpose and discover what it means to truly LIVE every day. It’s contemplative and sorrowful and at times funny. It’s a reminder that life is a gift.

Part memoir, part philosophy on what it means to be alive, and how difficult it can be to find a purpose, this is the kind of book that stays with you long after reading it.