As I have been telling friends and family about my cancer, I inevitably get asked how am I doing / holding up / getting along. As I have said in a previous post, I am largely able to function by focusing on the instrumental tasks of the day. I continue to get up at 5:30a (at least on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays — time permitting) to go lift weights and run. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I try to stay home to help my sons get ready for school (I usually leave after my younger son gets on the bus; my older son is in middle school and his bus doesn’t even show up until 8:30a). I make and go to appointments; I do my work at the office; I go to scout meetings, teach karate, and facilitate an online graduate course in biostatistics. In short, I keep myself busy. If I’m busy, I’m not thinking about possible outcomes of this journey (though, talking about my trials and tribulations with cancer as a “journey” brings a whole new meaning to the saying, “It’s the journey that’s important, not the destination!”).
Some people have commented that I really seem positive. I’m so glad. I have my good days and I have my bad days. A couple of weeks ago, my younger son had his final concert in elementary school. He had been working hard to get everything right and was really excited that the whole family was going to be there. As I stood around waiting for the concert to start, I really began to get weepy (thinking about the possibility of not being around to see my daughter’s concert). Later that night, I again cried as I said that I really wanted to take the kids to Disney (my daughteris a HUGE princess nut and I want to make sure that I can be there when she goes to see all her princess “idols”). But, days like that are becoming less frequent as I accept and work toward beating this disease.
I dear friend once told me of a parable about a Buddhist monk and his student: One day a student came to the Buddhist monk and asked ‘Master, how can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?‘ The monk held up a glass and said ‘Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. When I touch it, it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly right now.’”
The real challenge with dealing with cancer is to remain present. Do not worry about the future; worrying about the future only causes stress today (and takes away from enjoying the here and now). As I said, I am really working on “not sweating the little things.” MaryBeth has been wonderful in trying to remind me about that; she is very good at pointing out when I am not living according to that motto.
The other way I cope is through humor. Victor Frankl was Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Some of his therapeutic philosophy came from the atrocities he experienced while being held in Nazi concentration camps. Of humor, Frankl said:
Humor [is] another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
So I will continue to use my (albeit odd) humor to rise above and deal with this situation. Mark Twain once said: “Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” As I have said elsewhere on this blog, I take a more Monty Python-esque approach, favoring the following quote instead: “I’m not dead yet!”
Until next time….
Merle
Tags: Bibbity Bobbity Boo, Family, Main, Merle, The Martial Arts, Theology/Philosophy by Merle
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