[책] '숨결이 바람이 될 때.'

'

Anni, How's everything going there? Did you come back to your town? Or Did you already start your new job?

1. I came back at home from the chaos of yesterday. 

 Our lease contract is supposed to finish at the end of this month, and the new landlord asked us to pay $200 more from next year. I had to call couple of times to the regional office  and meet our new-ignorant manager.  In summary, we resolved to find another place to move to.  But if we move to the other place, we need to upload this change to the immigration and we think about giving money back to our flatmate since it's a sudden notice. 

 Jay got a cold and cut his finger deeply.

 We got the refusal email of our work visa from the immigration. They said our temporary resident status expired on 4th Dec. We both were exhausted. We talked with the staff of our agency, who said that Jay couldn't work anymore. I gave up. I said to him that I'd like to go back to South Korea. He said he needed to meet his boss and talked about this. He tried to find solution in Canada, on the other hand, I was planing what to do in South korea in my head.

After dinner, I suddenly felt pain while I was peeing. I was bleeding. I went to the pharmacy next to my place with Jay, and I was diagnosed bladder infection. But pharmacist couldn't prescribe. It was 8:30 at night. We got 10 minutes to run to the hospital where I could get antibiotic before it's closed. I paid $170 just for 10 pills of antibiotic and a doctor's kind attention. 

 It happened all yesterday.

 'Today was the worst day I've ever had in Calgary, so please tomorrow will be wee better than today.' I said to Jay before falling asleep.

 It's actually better than yesterday.  If it wasn't, well, I would be exploded by now.  

2. Are you still gonna cling to it when you've got 2 years left in your life? 

 

His name is Kevin. I met him pacing around the front door of Jay's workplace, waiting for Jay last night. Kevin was waiting for ramen to go. He didn't look hostile, so I wanted to talk with him.  We started our talk from the subject about the famous cafe and restaurant in downtown to the qualification for being a good president in Earth. 

He said he worked in the hospital, and I suddenly asked him this question.

 'Are you still gonna keep your job when you've got 2 years left in your life?'

Without hesitation, He said yes. He said he really likes his job. 

I've been full of thought about the book, 'When the breath becomes air' , and my subconciousness awakened when he said he worked in the hospital, rendering me ask that question to Kevin.

 We all know that we all die one day, but we don't know when we will die. 

I'm deluding myself that I will not die soon, but who knows, Anni.

It's hard just to imagine that I've got 2 years left in this life. No, no way. 

Will I be able to be calm in face of death? Could I accept that destiny and still try to live well? Could I not be depressed and helpless? Could I say 'why not me?', instead of 'why me?' Literally I don't know. I'm not sure at all how I'm gonna cope with that. 

But if I really have only 2 years left,  I want myself to cling to write. I find my identity most while I'm writing. It encourages me to live more meaningful and lively.  

I want myself to stay around with nature. It's fine if I can't travel around, but I need more a natural life than a hectic one. 

I'll give good memory to my friends and family. I'll cook for them and smile with them. 

I'll practice everyday to accept death and live every moment with my whole heart.  

I might live more wise if I live my life like I'm doomed to die soon. 

But why can't I live my life like I really have 2 years left now?   

'-- 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.--'

 As a neurosurgeon, Paul observed ceaseless death. It would always remind him of the meaning of a life. 

 

 The only death I saw was my grandmother's face, so I feel really unrealistic that my parents  will die one  day and myself will die next, or inversely. 

Even though I don't engage with death, I come to believe that I can invite the thought of mortality. Thinking about death, my death, I can tell what I value most, where I want to head for, what makes my life lively and meaningful clearly.    

In lots of moments I would forget that I'll die, whether it is 2 years, 20 years or luckily 50 years later. Then I hope I could recall the idea of death again. 

My life is a series of training to be closer with death, when the other side is still life. Life has death, and vice versa. I want myself to wind up with living my words.

3. What makes us human beings? 

 As a neurosurgeon, Paul cut patients' head, examined inside of it, and took out the tumor. Paul talked about Mattew in the book. An eight years old boy who was diagnosed hyphthalamus cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor was done and Mattew was discharged. If the hypothalamus get damaged, we would lose our control on basic drives and become a monster eating ruthlessly and being violent. About ten years later, Mattew became a 200 pounds monster who hit his mom, finally went to institution. It was because of just slight damage of hypothalamus.

If Wornicke's and Broca's areas, on the left side of our brain, are damaged, we couldn't understand language and communicate with others. 

'After someone suffers a dead trauma or a stroke, the destruction of these areas often restrains the surgeon's impulse to save a life: What kind of life exists without language?' 

Paul said like this. I wondered who we are, what kind of existence we are.

I afraid of death, but if I can't live as myself who feel love, express my emotion, and think about all the meaningful things in my life, I'd rather take death.

While I'm reading this book, I come to agree more that we are not superior existence, but 'breathing and metabolizing organisms', who can be a monster or an idiot with the 2mm damage on our brain. 

4. What a meaningful life means to you?  

 Basically we are breathing and metabolizing organisms, but at the same time,  I think that we are organisms striving to pursue meanings in a life. 

 Of course, not all of us. 

'-most students tended to focus on "lifestyle specialities"-those with more humane hours, higher salaries, and lower pressures.-- Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job-not a calling,'

 Paul chose neurosergery as his specialty since it seemed for him 'to present the most challenging and direct confrontation with meaning, identity, and death.'

It was impressing when he desired to work again as a neurosergeon after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He chould spend the rest day of his life for travelling or spending time with his family more. But he chose to work as a neurosergeon, enduring enormous pain with lots of pills. He said it's not just his job. He found his identity most working as a neurosergeon and it was his way of searching for the meaning of a life.

 I don't want to say that we all need to find a job which is capable of us giving meaning of our life. But I'm sure that we can search for meanings in our life. Some people live a life because the sun rises and have to work. but Some can question about the meaning of our existence and think deeply about the way to have more vitality in their lives.

 I believe we originally all truth-seekers on the road to death. Whether we really can get the meaning of our lives, we are doomed to go through our own journey and try to search for our own truth. And I'm sure we all have our own tools to do that, if we don't ignore our ability to use it.

5.

 Things are relentlessly happening on the surface. No one can solve my problem instead of myself. I deal with it. But regardless of what's going on in my life, I follow and pioneer my own way to live a meaingful life abutting death.