Taken from one of my strange and twisted art Progress Reports
Over the break I read an article on Dr. Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who wrote the book "When Breath Becomes Air" about his life when he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at age 36 and died at age 37. His story reminds me much of Cheng Zheng's and is strange because he is the literal representation of Cheng Zheng's philosophies.
He talks about the moment he is forced to come to terms with his mortality and how it changes everything and nothing at the same time. "Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that I would someday die, but I didn't know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that I would die, but I didn't know when."
"What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide, but existential authenticity each person must find on their own... the angst of mortality has no remedy in probability."
I think I've always paid a little more attention to my own mortality. As a high school student, for some strange reason, I had it my mind that I was going to die before I graduated. I didn't know how, but I believed that it was going to happen, and I didn't quite know what to do about it and then I really didn't know what to do about it when the end of senior year came around. I was always looking for my so called calling, but also didn't know if it was worth looking for because I was going to die anyways.
I've always been someone who valued authenticity the most, I valued it the most in other people and so I was always desperately searching for it within myself. Trying to find it in philosophy, religion, and personal expression only to come to the conclusion that I was never sure whether I was lying to myself or not. "According to Rousseau, authenticity is derived from the natural self, whereas inauthenticity is a result of external influences." And so came in my battered circle analogy.
Someday I might make that a piece of performance art. But right now I think I need a more peaceful expression of my current state in my search for existential authenticity.
When Breath Becomes Air review by Alice O'Keefe
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/03/when-breath-becomes-air-paul-kalanithi-review
The Limits of Authenticity - Ben G. Yacobi
https://philosophynow.org/issues/92/The_Limits_of_Authenticity
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