Short on Time, Short on Money

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi, page 160

Background

When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir about Paul Kalanithi’s journey from neurosurgeon to cancer patient and his evolving understanding of life and death. This passage comes deep in his battle with cancer.

What makes it wonderful?

Some days I want to be a full-time writer. Other days I want to make as much money as possible.

Occasionally, I get the itch to drop everything and hike the Appalachian Trail. Last year, I spent every free minute working on my golf game.

When Kalanithi talks about his changing priorities, I totally understand what he means. It’s like I was sitting across a high-top table from him, sipping an IPA, and nodding in agreement while listening to an old friend’s dilemma.

But then he snaps the terminal illness piece into the puzzle, and instantly brings gravity to the situation.

I struggle to decide how to spend my time now, and I’m a healthy 31 year old man. It feels like my time is an AMEX Black card with no limit.

When Kalanithi was diagnosed with cancer, he wasn’t much older than me. His time went from that same Black card to a piggy bank—mostly filled with pennies.

When you have a lot of time or a lot of money, you don’t need to worry about how you spend it. But when time and money are scarce, every decision carries more weight.

This writing is wonderful because Kalanithi made that feeling abundantly clear. It made me think about how I’d spend my time if my balance were running low.

Let's get technical

To give the reader this clarity, Kalanithi used an analogy, a comparison for the purpose of making a point.

He compared the feeling of having limited time to the feeling of having limited money.

For most of us who haven’t felt the crushing burden of a terminal illness, we still know what it feels like to be a broke college student. Or a single mom working two jobs. Or a family living paycheck to paycheck.

We know the hard decisions we have to make when we’re low on funds. And because we’ve had that experience, we can imagine the experience Kalanithi is having with his time.

This is a technique I call experience translation. There are many ways to do it, but you can’t go wrong with a good analogy.

Happy writing,

Joe