“Cancer is your most feared recurring nightmare. Your most influential teacher. Your most loyal follower. Your most read dog-eared, heart-wrenching, can’t-put-it-down, nail-biting, provocative page-turner with a terribly unfair ending. Your most honest mirror. Your most persistent Peter-Pan crocodile. Your most humbling supervisor. Your most confusing conundrum. And your most embarrassing moment on display.”
@ThePurposedSailor
#Relatable.
This Day in 2018:
Fear. Apathy. Acceptance.
I’ve written before about “being where my feet are”…lots of times, as a matter of fact.
A new phrase that I am finding myself saying over and over again is, “live short.”
I don’t know where I’m headed from here. I don’t know what lies ahead. And my best laid plans are only, at best, hypothetical. Understandably so, this is a difficult place to sit. It’s perpetual unknown……and actually, the only known is the unknown.
This place can be scary. Like stay-in-my-room-and-never-leave scary. I was out to dinner tonight with a dear friend and as we were getting ready to leave, the thought occurred to me (because we were talking about “living short”), I don’t even have the guarantee that I’ll get home. I’m assuming I will, but I won’t know I will until I actually walk in the door. And then, will I even wake up tomorrow morning? I mean, I’m assuming I will because I told my friend, “see you tomorrow,” but will I? So, then, do I find myself living in fear of ‘what’s coming next?’ because, well, I know something is coming next. The next 50 years of my life (yet another assumption) aren’t going to be easy. It’s not like I checked off all of the hard stuff on my life list as of 38 years old. More IS coming. More hard WILL be ahead. And there are days I can definitely feel that I am bracing myself for the next freight train…I walk with caution because something will come out of nowhere.
This place can also be apathy. Hopelessness. “Eh, well…whatever. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s always going to be hard so what’s the point in hoping for better…” Or maybe it’s, “I know the freight train is coming so I’ll just let it blow through me, destroy me and maybe that one will take me out for good….maybe not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did.” I find myself sometimes saying these things. Everyone has hard. There are A LOT of people close to me that are hurting in all different ways. I am a counselor and meet people daily who are experiencing their own freight trains blowing up their lives. It’s hard not to get sucked into the vortex of ‘whatever’ and I have definitely felt those days come and go where I couldn’t have cared less about waking up the next day.
This place can also be acceptance. An understanding that the unknowns and the freight trains will exist but continuing to live in the moment as full as possible. That’s not to say the hard isn’t acknowledged….but it is the ability to see the hard and hold it while also finding hope, expressing gratitude and choosing to make the moments (easy or hard) matter…matter for something…or someone. I feel I have done this, too…Wishing to wake up the next day. Making this experience (and the others before this) matter. Living in authenticity while expressing gratitude. Trusting that the unknown will become known when it’s supposed to and finding peace and freedom in that space in-between the two. Living short. Living real. Living full.
Fear. Apathy. Acceptance.
All of the above.
This Day in 2019:
I Heart NY
Cancer sucks.
I barely made it through today. My body is just not strong. And my joints and bones hurt as deeply as can be felt.
I cried walking through Central Park because every step hurt so bad. And I was angry. Stupid cancer.
But I’m in NYC. With my bestest people. And I love it here.
No post for 7/25/20