Living in the Present

I was reading the following quote this morning:

““The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.””

— Chuang Tzu

It occurred to me that a big part of living under the cloud of cancer, is the obsession with survival, or putting lots of effort on what else can be done. Like that quote says, this can rob one from the joy of living in the present.

I have been looking at that delicate balance between being responsible and looking at more alternative possibilities and living and enjoying life as it is. How much energy I put into reading all the fantastic healing books people sent me, ordering more vitamins, looking for solutions and just being in the moment, and simply living.

For example, I have already told my Partnership Course community that I will not participate any more so I can concentrate on my healing… and now I am reconsidering. Does cancer means completely altering my life? Is there space for all of it? Is there a value in continuing life as I know it for the sense of aliveness, community, and some normalcy in the middle of it all?

There is no clear answer. I do know that sickness and death are both parts of living, and living now means experiencing and accepting it all, what I like and what I do not like.

This must be a difficult task for all of us. It is so hard to come to terms with one’s own pain or the pain of a loved one. Yet, that is all part of life, and part of living. I have been going through this process of acceptance of it all. The good the bad and the ugly… right now for me, I feel great, and yet I am working on accepting what might lie ahead. I know you have your own processing to do. I encourage you to get out of your head and into a dialogue and share your experience with someone you trust. From my experience, getting this out of the head and into the listening of another, has a tremendous value of release and learning.

Thank you for your listening,

Thank you for being with me on this journey, supporting me on the way.

I love you so much.

Ima