<When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi> 181015

숨결이 바람 될 때 in Korean

작년인가 한창 인기 있었을 때 읽어보고 싶었으나, 도서관마다 대출 중에 예약까지 꽉 차 있어서 미뤄놨던 책이다

요즘 동네 도서관에 원서 책이 많이 구비되어 있어서 보다가 딱 발견해서 집었다 ㅎㅎ 원래 원서로 살까 했었는데.. 다 읽고 난 후 든 생각은 안 사길 잘했다.. 의학 용어가 많이 나와서 어려운 점이 있었지만 문장이 길지 않고 전반적인 단어 수준이 그렇게 어렵지는 않았던 것 같다. Persuasion보다 쉬운 느낌

이 책은 에세이 형식으로, 저자가 암에 걸리기 전과 그 후에 대해 적은 글로 주요 키워드는 '죽음' 이다. 인간의 생명은 유한하다는 것을 우리 모두 알고는 있겠지만 대부분 직접 피부로 와닿게 느끼면서 살고 있지는 않을 것이다. 저자도 마찬가지로, 의사로서 환자들을 대해왔지만 본인이 병에 걸리고 나니 보이게, 느끼게 된 것들에 대해 적었다. 이를 통해 독자인 우리는 결코 '죽음'이 멀리 있지 않다는 것을 느껴보고 인생에서 중요한 것에 대해 다시 한 번 생각해볼 기회를 가지게 된다

(재밌는 표현)

192  I did it once, so it should be old hat, right?

(인상적이었던 구절들)

115  Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death-it's something that happens to you and those around you. But Jeff and I had trained for years to actively engage with death, to grapple with it, like Jacob with the angel, and, in so doing, to confront the meaning of a life. We had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility. Our patients' lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn't. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgement will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.

172  Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them, where, as at the end of that Sunday's reading,

the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that "One sows and another reaps." I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.

180  My life up until my illness could be understood as the linear sum of my choices. ... But now I lived in a different world, a more ancient one, where human action paled against 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 though the oracles and seers, those given divine vision.

224  "Bereavement is not the truncation of married love," C.S. Lewis wrote, "but one of its regular phases-like the honeymoon. What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase too."