Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.
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Paul Kalanithi
Neurosurgeon and writer
United States · 1977–2015
Science and medicine
About
Chief resident in neurological surgery at Stanford, diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer at thirty-six and dead at thirty-seven. His essays for the New York Times and Stanford Medicine became the memoir When Breath Becomes Air, published after his death.
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