Oncology patients have been given the gift of facing mortality. Do we on the outside see this facing mortality as a gift or a curse? Do we live in avoidance and denial of the simple fact that we all start to die the instant we are born? For the oncology/cancer patient, life's greatest mystery perhaps, is made paramount in their phenomenologic field. Also the prospect of suffering of the mind, body and soul will come into play and usually present with profound fear. Yes, as the Buddha says "Life is suffering." But here too it really depends if you see this as an opportunity or a curse. Life just is and how we define life defines how we see death.
The most loving, attentive patients are those with cancer knowing they have the knowledge they will "die before their time." So what are these patients looking at that provides an insight into the reality of life that makes it more than worthwhile? Priorities.
Once the impact of the fear drifts away like so many thoughts during meditation they begin to appreciate all the things they took for granted. Instead of the sun coming up, it becomes the rapturous awakening of a new day resplendent with colors, sounds, aromas, feelings and the people around them. Gone are the worries of things. What can we learn from these wonderful people who as Rudolph Steiner in his Anthroposophic view would tell you, chose this life to provide others with service opportunities and to be teachers.
Can we choose a new life, a new direction? Yes, there are so many tools but again we must make them a priority. Choosing a new direction for your life is a choice not a happenstance. It is like the character in the movie The Way. Emilio Estevez is talking to his real life father Martin Sheen and says, "You don't choose a life, you live one."." Change the mind and the world changes. It is similar to when we give you get. We have never been successful waiting to get then we give. This is a paradox. We give when the well spring of our life feels empty and it will be filled. Any person who volunteers can tell you loving and giving fill you with warmth faster than any personal enrichment experience they have ever been through.
There is some work to be done. Again there is a paradox that must be addressed. We need to dig into ourselves and do some "unwork" to what we think about reality. We change the mind in order to change the world. As the Taoists point out, "True self is no self." If we have no predilections of who we are we are able to see indeed who we really are in this world. Help abounds around us from Brene' Brown to Eckhart Tolle to Shawn Achor. According to them and experientially evidenced by this writer is that we train our minds to see, think and do according to the life we choose. "It is not what you think you see. it is what you THINK you see."
Lessons from Shawn Achor include mediation, exercise and gratitude. From Brene Brown it is a life facing vulnerability and "I am enough." For Eckhart Tolle it is the power of now. We all need to live in the lives in front of us and not in our heads. Our minds are clogged with debris from childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. We spend 21 years of our life finding out who we thought we were only to spend the next 60 years undoing the damage. It is time to love, live and be whole using the myriad of tools that are available to us. My oncology patients hear me tell this too them everyday. Live now, live well and the rest does not matter. Today is today and that is all that matters.
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