I've been mulling this one over for quite awhile. And I still don't think I have it quite handled, but I'm fairly sure I am not thinking about this the same way Lance thinks of it. Well, natch... I'm not nearly as fast on a bicycle as he is and besides, I'm just a *few* years older.
Originally, I read this remark that someone sent to Lance Armstrong when his cancer diagnosis became widely known. At that point, Lance was far from coming out the other side of the experience. And when I re-read the book - "It's Not About the Bike" - the remark struck me anew and has been with me ever since. I'm not the only one to take note, because a brief search shows several people quoting these words. How are cancer patients the lucky ones? Hmm?
Well, let me digress for a minute. Or maybe a couple of minutes. I have friends who have been fighting much more serious battles than I have with this cancer. People who have reached the point of saying they weren't sure anymore why they're doing it. People who woke up in the morning and wanted to just die because they were (and are) so tired of the whole process. Doctors appointments, needles, pills, bills (OMG the bills!) and worse than the bills, insurance fights... all that in the midst of that having to give up their whole self-concept. All of it. And then re-define themselves. It is another example of letting go of what we hold dear, willingly or not. I only know the barest edge of that... and while I'm thankful for that, it humbles me and makes me wonder why I write as if I know? Really, I was more concerned about the changes to my life than I was about the cancer (which several people close to me thought was outlandish...and rightly so!). But here I am, writing anyway... and I won't stop. :-) But back to the point of the post...
So what about it? What makes someone who has a life-threatening disease consider themselves lucky? Or more broadly, what is it about going through an intense adversity that changes people into thinking - and perhaps more importantly - feeling that they are somehow chosen? Parallels abound once the question is made a bit broader and I find it begins to make sense within that context. Some of the parallels that come to mind - military experience (which I don't have), intensive training (which I know very well) - and now that I think of it, it seems the common thread is a sense of surviving something. Going through a difficult passage and finding the result of the struggle has produced a different perception, a different approach, a different person still moving into the future, but now (as Eliot said) no longer at ease in the old dispensation. No longer living the same... perhaps more conscious, more aware than ever before.
There are spiritual examples as well, and our myths are full of the struggle, the passage, and the changeling that results from it all.
It has been good to write about this. And I celebrate the struggle even while lacking understanding of it and the mechanics of it.
And I celebrate being on the downhill slope of the radiation treatments. #17 done today. Eleven more to go! Woot!
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While attempting to write my personal statement for medical school two years ago, I actually did, at one point, wish I had some sort of traumatic medical experience just so I could write about it and have an easy essay. Looking back on it now, and seeing your struggle, I can tell how foolish of a thought that was. It's pretty amazing that Lance had that thought while he was still in the woods, he must have had a great sense of drive and confidence that he could find his way through the uncertainty. I hope that you, too can see the path through all the foliage and know that when all seems lost, you can always rely on your friends to have a chainsaw handy at your side :P (too many metaphors? :)) You're awesome, Neale!
ReplyDeleteJoyce... what a great comment. It reminds me of a woman I went to college with - an accomplished pianist - who said to me as we went our separate ways at the end of one spring semester: "Pray for me to suffer." I thought that a rather odd request and said so. But she said she'd always wanted to be a great artist, and because great artists had to suffer, she needed to suffer to attain her goal. Interesting approach, don't you think? But not foolish, I think. :-) You have had your own struggles, I would say, it's just that your character and make-up haven't categorized them as struggles. See? You are awesome in your own right! But we knew that already!
ReplyDeleteAs for Lance, I think the person writing to him had the thought, but it stuck with Lance enough to be reported in his book. And now it has stuck with me.