I’ve learned this is 22 year old Chris Rumble of Kent, in Washington, USA – would love to track this gal down and share a little of her story with you!

If any of you can help me out, leave a comment or email me at mail@johilder.com

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Wondering how to hone your skills as a writer and communicator? How to balance your inner muse and genius with your inner critic and editor?

Then you need Blitz Your Blog!

When? Saturday, February 23rd. 10am – 4pm.

Where? Inspirational Health – Elder St, Lambton (Newcastle)

How much? $45pp

Book now! Places limited.

Click on the link below to pay securely via Paypal.

An email conforming your place in the workshop will be sent out to you on receipt of your payment.

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In fact, cancer is not rare. The odds of getting cancer in your lifetime are the same as being born a boy – latest statistics state one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.* When every second person gets something, that something isn’t rare.

Why this myth is unhelpful - Whilst ever we believe we have a low chance of having a particular thing happening to us, the more unlikely we are to change our behaviours, or change our attitude towards it. However, the most effective way to prevent cancer, and to help those who have it now, is to change our behaviours and attitudes.

Be the change – Acknowledge cancer is no longer a rare occurrence in our society, and perhaps re-examine your attitudes towards your health and well-being in light of this information. Also, think about the way you view people who find themselves diagnosed with cancer, and whether those perceptions are based on the reality – cancer is commonplace and curable – or based on the myth – cancer is rare, and always fatal.

MYTH #2 – Cancer will kill you.

For most people, a cancer diagnosis no longer means certain death. Once, a cancer diagnosis was rare, and death was likely. Now, thanks to increased awareness, better health education, high-tech research and improved treatments, it’s cancer fatalities which are becoming rarer and rarer.

Why this myth is unhelpful – A morbid fear of cancer – and anxiety about possible outcomes – can cause as much, if not more, distress for the cancer-diagnosed person, their friends and family than the actual disease, symptoms or treatment. This pervading fear of dying of cancer can also prevent people investigating troubling symptoms and warning signs, despite the fact early diagnosis of cancer dramatically improves treatment outcomes.

Be the change - Whilst cancer may lead to an untimely and tragic demise, a diagnosis in no way spells certain death. It simply isn’t true a cancer diagnosis means you will die of cancer. Please, have symptoms or signs checked earlier rather than later. For those troubled by fearful and anxious thoughts after a diagnosis, counselling or support is available via your GP, a social worker or local cancer charity. Call the Cancer Council NSW on 13 11 20 (within Australia) or contact a cancer support service or counsellor in your area.

MYTH #3 – Cancer is smarter then we are.

Cancer cells are not smarter than us – it’s just they don’t know when enough is enough. Even a virus is well aware if its host dies, it dies too, and tries to escape well in advance. Compare this rudimentary intelligence with that of cancer cells. No, cancer isn’t clever, or intelligent. It’s just plain old, garden-variety dumb.

We’ve circulated this myth which says cancer has some kind of mind of its own. Certainly, when it defies treatment, it can seem like it’s outwitting us. But it isn’t.

Why this myth is unhelpful - When we have cancer, believing the cancer has a life of it’s own can leave us feeling our body is “out to get us”. This can lend itself to a base distrust of our body, undermining our confidence in our ability to heal or “outwit” the cancer at a time when we can be feeling physically and mentally diminished, weak and vulnerable.

Cancer cells are not smarter than people are – they simply lost the switch which tells them when to turn off. Very clever people continue to work to find out the reasons why, and are also finding ways to turn off those cells or at the very least, think of new ways to get them the hell outta there before they do too much damage.

Be the change – Cancer is a sign something in our body is unbalanced and needs immediate attention. It’s when we need to direct our most tender care and compassion towards our body, not treat it with disdain or distrust because it “let us down” or “tried to kill us”.

Rather than making our body the object of anger and suspicion, instead lavish it with tender nurture and respect. You wouldn’t harshly berate a sick child. Affirming the body as able to heal and worthy of ours and others care will both empower and soothe us in a time when we need it the very most.

MYTH #4 – Cancer is evil.

We’ve interpreted cancer’s mindless advance through the body as a kind of cunning malevolence, probably because this has helped us see it as “not part of us” or as “the enemy”. However, in reality cancer is merely cells doing what cells do best – multiplying, over and over. Cancer has no mind of it’s own, and has no will or intent towards us.

Why this myth is unhelpful – The mindless advance of cancer can make us think it has some mystical force attached to it.  Imagining ourselves “fighting”against cancer can help us feel strong, and as if we’re “doing something” about the cancer. But metaphors of evil and malevolence can also be incredibly emotionally and mentally debilitating and anxiety producing, and can feed intense feelings of victimisation and helplessness.

Be the change – Instead of focusing on the negative attributes – real, or imagined – of the cancer, focus always on the positive attributes of the person. Use metaphors which depict cancer as “less than” everything the person with cancer is, instead of setting them up against cancer in a mental conflict they may feel unprepared or unwilling to engage in.

MYTH #5 – Cancer is a failure or punishment.

People often say things like “God is trying to teach you something” or “The Universe has a lesson in this for you” when someone is diagnosed with cancer, but in reality, few people really believe this. More often its simply something to say when they don’t really know what else to say. However, some folks really do secretly suspect the person with cancer has done “something wrong” somewhere, taken a “wrong turn” in life, or caused their own cancer because of bad thoughts or feelings. The person themselves may feel this is true.

Why this myth is unhelpful - Whenever we believe cancer has occurred because of a particular shortcoming or behaviour on the part of the person who had it – whether it’s a real cause, like smoking, or a more esoteric one, like unforgiveness – we’ll behave or speak in a way (perhaps even inadvertently) which expresses that judgement. Feeling shame because of something we did we think may have caused the cancer will evoke a sense of condemnation and guilt, and perhaps even resignation about the cancer. Whilst cancer can happen because of things we do or do not do, cancer itself is not a failure or punishment. Even if cancer happened because of something a person did or failed to do, no one ever “deserves” it, nor our judgement about why they have it.

Be the change – Ascribing attributes of justice or “deservedness” to cancer is giving it way more power than it deserves – cancer is actually amoral. Instead of wondering why cancer came in the first place, focus on instilling hope in the possibility of a healed, healthy future. Walk beside them in their journey, helping them direct their energy into people and activities which will foster good health, emotionally and relationally, as well as physically .

MYTH #6 – Cancer is the winner.

All those metaphors we use around cancer of battles and fights, heroes and victims, inevitably leads us to some less than conducive images of the outcomes.

Why this myth is unhelpful - Every time we say someone “lost their battle with cancer”, we intimate that between the two of them, cancer was the better and the stronger. But how did cancer win when someone dies? Did the cancer not die with them? And what family can cancer leave behind? What wonderful glory trail of paths blazed, adventures enjoyed or stories written did the cancer forge for future generations? What good memories, smiles and laughter did it and will it continue to inspire? How does cancer outshine us, in life, or in death? How can cancer ever win?

Be the change. We can change the language we use around cancer. We can stop talking about it as if it ever wins, even when someone passes away. People do not “lose their battle” with cancer – they die, and when they do the cancer dies with them. We do not grieve the cancer, nor should we.  The cancer ought never outshine the person we loved in life, nor be exalted as the victor over them when they pass away.

Unlike the magnificent human being who we loved, and unfortunately, tragically lost, cancer leaves no legacy worth remembering, and we dishonor all our loved ones amazing achievements in life when we speak of cancer as having bettered or conquered them.

Cancer does not deserve the credit we give it when we speak of it this way. Instead say “They died, after having lived a wonderful life, having loved many and achieved much. They died of cancer, but cancer did not win. ”

Feb. 4th is World Cancer Day

 *http://www.cancerinstitute.org.au/publications/cancer-in-nsw-incidence-and-mortality-2008

*****

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It’s my go-to book whenever I’m tempted to believe resistance to my work is coming from the outside.

It never is. Its always coming from me.

If you wish to create a an artistic work of any kind, I strongly recommend Pressfields book. It’s incredibly sensible, motivating and clarifying.

Todays Note To Self – stop thinking being a critic is the work. It isn’t the work. It’s resistance to doing our own work which makes us criticise others. Stop it. Man up. Just get to work.

“The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.”

Steven Pressfield – The War Of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

*****
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When I had cancer, I didn’t want another “cure yourself from cancer with this amazing diet” book. I didn’t want to read another book about how “positive thinking” cured cancer, or how my negative thoughts probably caused it in the first place. I also didn’t want to read yet another book in which someone described their wonderful personal transformation or the deep spiritual lesson they learned because of cancer. I’d met enough people dealing with cancer to know the personal transformation was optional for most people with cancer, and for a long time, I struggled to reconcile my own faith with my diagnosis. I didn’t want to hear about how “God was trying to teach me something.”

Because if He was, what hadn’t killed me had certainly made me strong enough to feel I could just give God a good old punch in the mouth.

What I wanted was someone who’d been there to write me some letters, heart to heart and soul to soul, and just tell me the truth about what it was really like for people to have cancer.

I wanted to know if my feelings were normal, and when I could expect to get my “sparkle” back. I wanted to know how to push my head and my heart forward into the future, how to hope again, how I could pull myself out of my fears and anxieties. I wanted to know if everyone who had cancer felt the way I did.

I didn’t want someone to tell me this was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wanted someone to agree with me that it was crappy, useless and horrible. I wanted someone to sit with me and say “I know”, not “one day you’ll be a better person because of this.” I didn’t want to be a better person. I wanted to live long enough to see my children grow up, even if that meant I stayed a terrible person.

I didn’t want to evolve. I wanted to survive.

Soul Letters for the Cancer Sojourner was written over the 30 days of January 2013, each one a letter from my survivor soul to yours.

Chapters - 

#1 This Is The Beginning - Despite what you thought about what it means to have cancer, where this road leads and how long you journey for, this is not the end. This is the beginning.

#2 Choose Your Own Cancer Adventure - You get to choose your own cancer adventure, and do this any way you please – noble or cowardly, heroic or needy, changed or unchanged. Give yourself a break.

#3 You Can Change One Thing Today - Cancer is not in control. You are. Cancer only knows how to do one thing – but you are capable of way, way more.

#4 Cancer Never Wins - There is more to you than just the parts cancer can reach. Cancer never, ever wins.

#5 My Name Is Not “Cancer” - As kindly as you can, let folks know cancer is something you’re experiencing right now, but  hasn’t become your identity.

#6 Letting Other People Be Part Of Your Story When You Have Cancer - As someone with a scary disease,  allowing others to come around you and give their little offerings to you in the ways they know how is very important.

#7 When ‘Support’ Means Something Different For Everybody - When we have cancer, folks often rally with their own kind of “support”, but exactly what “support” looks and feels like can be a matter of perspective.

#8 Finding Out The Deep Meaning Behind Your Having Cancer - You may feel cancer has no purpose, in the bigger picture of your life. But your having cancer may match up exactly with someone else’s reason for living.

#9 Some Negative Thoughts About Positive Thinking - Thinking positive may make others feel more relaxed, but negative fears and emotions rarely disappear.

#10 Telling Yourself The Truth -  Truth-telling is you punching fear of cancer right in the head.

#11 You’re Okay - When I say “you’re okay”, I mean I’m not judging the way you live your life, your thoughts and emotions or your choices as good or bad. They are what they are.

#12 Not My Time - I love this day, because today I am here to write about that other day when I had the choice whether to hold out for another day.

#13 Creativity And Cancer - Cancer cannot make anything new. It can only mindlessly replicate itself over and over. But you are an amazing, creative being.

#14 How To Be An Inspiration - This is what I know – honesty, authenticity and a willingness to simply tell the truth about ourselves absolutely changes others’ lives.

#15 Your Story Matters - People are hurting. We are hurting. We need each others stories.

#16 Your Wonderful, Powerful, Imperfect Story - Your story has value simply because it’s yours. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or need a moral or message to matter, or to be powerful.

#17 Your Burning, Broken, Beautiful Story - You don’t learn about how to give people hope out of a book, in a class or from an expert. You learn it by very almost losing it, and then getting it back again.

#18 Cancer Winners and Losers, Fighters and Survivors - One of the hardest things about surviving cancer is realising you can’t actually take much credit for it.

#19 We Feel It All - We  who’ve had cancer look tough. We seem tough. But trust me – we feel it all.

#20 Make Cancer Pay - Today, we turn this thing around. Make up your mind to think less about what cancer can take away from you, and more about what you can take away from it.

Me, in 2003, during chemotherapy. I hate that when I had cancer, I actually looked pretty damn fantastic.

#21 Curing “Burnt Toast” Syndrome - Looking after yourself properly isn’t wrong, selfish or bad. Something you’re doing isn’t working. Time for a change.

#22 You’re Going To Make It - This isn’t going to last forever, my friend. You’re going to make it to the graduation, the wedding, the birth and the birthdays. You’re going to make it.

#23 No More Dramas - No, no more dramas. No more for you. That’s enough now, because time is short, and there’s so much to be done.

#24 Funny Things People Say When You Have Cancer - People always mean well, even if the things they say sometimes don’t make sense. Just smile. Take the lasagne (there will be lasagne) and go punch a pillow.

#25 When Dignity Wears A Size Smaller - Regardless of how you play your victim card, nobody can ever remove your dignity from you by force. But you may be buying it a size smaller, just for now.

#26 Buy A Ticket - Buy a ticket to your future. You’re more than what’s happening to you right now. Invest yourself in ways real and unreal in a life above and beyond cancer.

#27 What Really Matters - I’d always thought being told you had cancer would be the worst part, but what worried me the most was the realisation I hadn’t worked out what really mattered.

#28 Believe What God Says About You - There are more ways than one for cancer to kill you. And there’s more than one way for faith to heal you.

#29 Big Far Away, Where Hope Waits For Me - Go outside. Go big far away. Expand your long-distance vision, nurture your ability to see into the future. Your hope needs somewhere far away to wait for you.

#30 The Three Questions - Much of our dealing with dying is pretending it isn’t happening right up until it the end. This isn’t helpful. We need to start talking about it way before then.

Pre-order the print version of Soul Letters for the Cancer Sojourner, and receive the e-book free!

The print book version of Soul Letters will be available late Feb, 2013. Pre-order your copy now for $12.99 (+P&P) and you’ll receive the e-book PDF version as well for free!

Because it’s a conversation we may need to have – with ourselves, and with others – at some time.

When things are going great in our lives, we pretty much have the luxury of avoiding stuff we don’t want to talk or think about, much as we might hide a mess under the bed or food wrappers down the side of the couch. However, when something like cancer comes along, other things in our life often need to move around to make room. And when we start moving things around, our no-go zones become exposed to the wide, blue heavens and all God’s children too. Oh my God, we cringe, there’s all that stuff I just couldn’t face, didn’t get around to, don’t want to think about. Well, honey, guess what? You need to deal with it now.

For an awful lot of people, thinking about dying is stuffed way, way under the bed. The plan generally is to deal with it quickly at the last possible moment. I wonder – would you recognise that last possible moment if you saw it coming?

If you have cancer, you may have thought you saw it coming in the first five seconds after somebody said to you, “You have cancer.”

These kinds of conversations are very, very hard to have. Nobody teaches us how to do it. Generally, in our culture, we don’t even talk about death for goodness sake, even though we all die. Much of our dealing with dying is about pretending it isn’t happening and wishing it wouldn’t right up until it becomes inevitable. This isn’t very helpful. We probably need to start talking about it way before then.

People don’t like to talk about dying because death and dying is considered to be very, very bad, and to be avoided at all costs. Hello – of course, it is.  Death is bad, obviously sad, and can also be tragic and untimely and unfair. But our refusal to even speak about death as being a part of life perpetuates the belief that all death is intrinsically bad, as in wrong, and we mustn’t ever talk about it. I’ve learned that whilst dying is unavoidable, it is actually possible to have a relatively good death. Not everyone gets one, but I think it’s in all our best interests to see that those who could possibly have one do so.

image credit: iStockphoto

One way we can improve the kinds of deaths people have is by stopping talking about them as if all death is a failure.

I especially become angry when it’s carelessly remarked “They lost their battle with cancer.” What if, in their mind, they never fought cancer? And if they didn’t fight cancer, but rather journeyed through cancer right to it’s end (remember, when we die of cancer, cancer dies too), would that really be so awful, so wrong?

—–

A few years ago, I heard someone speak about what we might say to someone who was facing their own death. Their suggestion was so simple and so powerful, I’m passing it on as a suggestion for perhaps how you might want to think about it, or have a conversation with someone who has been diagnosed with cancer. I’m not in any way suggesting this will be easy. It couldn’t possibly be. But it will be at the very least clarifying. Perhaps even liberating.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, there are three questions to consider:

Is it my time to die?

If it isn’t my time, am I  prepared to do what’s required to survive?

If this is my time, am I ready for that?

The answers to these questions may impact not just how you journey through cancer and treatment, but also the quality of your life, or your death, at the end of it.

You can see now why I didn’t put this chapter right at the beginning.

—–

Of all the things I learned whilst I had cancer and since, learning to have this conversation has been the most useful piece of information I’ve gleaned yet. I’ve had this talk with myself, and I’ve suggested it to others. I believe the conclusions you come to could very well be the only information you’ll need, whatever happens with the cancer. But that doesn’t mean the conversation won’t be confronting or uncomfortable.

We all want a good life, and a long one, but we don’t always get one. Now, given my own health history, I don’t know if I’ll have a long life, but I sure as heck want a good one – and I also want a good death. I’ve known folks who didn’t have a good death, and I believe this is as just as tragic as a short life or a wasted one. It may be time to move the couch and have a bit of a check underneath. Maybe the couch has already been moved, and you’ve relegated yourself to an upstairs closet to avoid facing the subject. If you’ve been avoiding it, I gently, loving suggest you don’t avoid it, if at all possible.

Of the three questions I’ve suggested, you may only need to answer one, and knowing the answer to that one may make all the difference. This is not a formula, or a guarantee. It’s simply a way for you to open up conversations between yourself and the folks you love, to help you recognise and acknowledge your priorities, your values and your resources.

I don’t know what else to say, except it sucks we have to even think about this stuff whilst most people get to leave the couch where it is, and ignore the mess under the bed until much, much later. And I’m sorry about that. So much about having cancer is bad – not just inconvenient, unfair, and scary – but yep, plain old bad. I know you hate this. Me too. Me too, to all of it.

Tomorrows Soul Letter is the very last one. Love you. Hope you’ll be back. See you then. xxx

*****

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As I look around our own compact home with security grills on every window, itself surrounded closely by other houses all of them shut in on themselves rather than opened up to the outside, it’s no wonder my eyes are so tired. Everything in my world is right there, close-up, in my face. To see something far away, I need to get in my car and drive to somewhere else – somewhere where the land meets the ocean, or the land meets the sky, or things grow which touch both the land and the sky. I wonder if I can retrain my eyes by looking into the distance more often.

image credit: iStockphoto

When you have cancer, it’s almost like the world closes in around you. You may even pull your walls in closer on purpose to give you something to hold you up, to make you feel safe. You may find it hard, even scary, to look too far into the future. Fear of not even having a future can force us to only look at what’s right in front of us – the here and the now.

We may call this “living in the moment” – it sounds far more romantic than “What’s the point of thinking about the future? I could be dead in a year.”

In the cloister of the cancer world, our days can be reduced to a pattern of eating, drinking, sleeping, and being available for whatever others want to do to us to get rid of the cancer. It often doesn’t feel much like “fighting cancer” – surely that would feel like doing something? We wait for results, we wait for appointments, we wait for the side-effects of treatment to kick in and then abate again. We look at the walls of the inside of the rooms of our house, the insides of waiting rooms and clinics, the insides of cars and buses and taxis. We become dully familiar with places we never even noticed before – that weird space behind the toilet, the dust on the medicine cabinet shelf, the wrinkles on the inside of an elbow.

There is no more wonder, serendipity or spontaneity. The air and the ground and the sea and the growing things must be kept away, and we from them, because they are wild with germs and dirt and chill and could make us even sicker. The walls grow higher. The colours grow duller. The sky moves further away. Our vision for far away things begins to grow cloudy, whilst at the same time our ability to perceive the tiniest change in our body or immediate environment is heightened. Someone moved the soap. I can feel a lump. As night approaches, the sun edges closer to the horizon and the clouds recline before it, aroused into amazing purples and blushing orange and peach and gold….whilst we potter about our living room in our dressing gown and slippers, closing the window against the chill and our myopic eyes against the painful, boring day.

A gift we must give ourselves when we have cancer is the opportunity to see things which are far away.

Things which are outside of us. Things which tower over us, and run beneath us. Things which rush up and lap at our feet. Things which drop away before us. We need to see the sky and the stars and the horizon. Things which are great, and which move very slowly. Things we can only see when the earth turns. The tallness and the depth and the proximity of things.

When you have cancer, take care to preserve your vision. Much like I need a break from this computer screen, and probably a break from this small house and neighbourhood too, you need a break from your small, closed-in world. Your vision – the way your mind, and your soul, sees the world – needs to spend some time out in open spaces, away from the cloister of a cancer experience. Your imagination feeds hope, remember, and bigness, far-awayness, over-theredness feeds your imagination with all the good, nourishing things it needs to stay alive.

Go outside. Go big far away. Look up at the stars. Count the sun-sparkles on the ocean. Run your hands through sand, dirt and stones. Find a place where there’s a wide sky, and lay yourself beneath it. Throw up the blinds, and watch the wind cause chaos. Grow something where you can see it. Throw something somewhere you can’t. Place space before you, and distance behind you. Hope is living as if you’re heading now for everything you want and desire, as if it’s just a matter if time – because one day you’ll get there. You’ll get there. Expand your long-distance vision further and further, and nurture your ability to see into your own future.

Your hope needs somewhere far away to wait for you .

*****

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This will take a step of faith – perhaps the very first one you’ve ever taken. Faith may be the last thing you feel capable of right now. But if you’ve ever read or heard someone’s story and laughed or cried with it, or been moved or inspired by it, then you are capable of faith. It takes faith to believe, and to believe in someone’s story, whether it really happened or is made up. If you’ve ever believed someone else’s story as they told it to you, you have enough faith to believe in your own.

Believe what God says about you.

If you’ll take this step of faith, then all the tangled, crumpled things will begin to unravel and unfold before you. You may begin to believe you can indeed let go when everything inside you screams to hold on. Letting go can feel like the last thing you want to do, but letting go is what you need to do to move beyond the here and now. There’s a saying, “Let go, or be dragged.” Can you remember how it feels to let go?

When you let go, you’ll feel afraid. Perhaps very afraid. But in surrender, you will begin to see everything afresh. What’s been unclear and hidden from you will come into view. Your eyes will see horizons again. When was the last time you saw a horizon?

image credit: iStockphoto

Believe what God says about you.

Faith is the first step, and will always be the first step toward healing, wholeness, health, freedom and future, whatever the outcome of this present difficulty.

Yes, even if the worst possible case scenario seems or becomes inevitable, there’s still room and scope for hope, healing and wholeness – in your soul and in your mind, in your relationships and in your religion. You can be healed, even if you don’t survive this.

There are more ways than one for cancer to kill you. And there’s more than one way for faith to heal you.

Believe what God says about you.

Don’t be afraid.  It’s only one step.

The first step isn’t a leap. A leap of faith may come later, after you’ve mastered the step. God knows you, and He knows where you are. He knows you’re fragile right now. And He understands all you can cope with is one small step.

Believe what God says about you.

Listen. He’s speaking.

“ For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”*

You’re far from home, far from where you want to be. This exile feels like hell, like punishment and retribution and spite. But it isn’t those things. You haven’t been punished by God, but you have been captive. He wants to make you free. He wants to make you whole, healed and free.

Your story now has a chapter about an exile and a captivity. It’s not a perfect story any more. But there is a future and a hope in your story, still. God has written restoration and prosperity into your story. Don’t believe what you see right now. Believe instead in the higher story. Believe what God says about you.

Believe what God says about you.

*Jeremiah 29:11-14

*****

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image credit: iStockphoto

Late in 2003, I was told that I was dying of cancer. I’d always thought being told you had cancer would be the worst part, but it wasn’t like that for me. What worried me the most was the realisation I hadn’t worked out what it was, not by a long shot.

Now, almost ten years later, I’m still working on it. I like to believe I’m closer than I was. My current operating theory runs like this: in order to work out what’s really important – what it is –  it helps to know what isn’t really important.

Here are a few things I’ve worked out are not really important to me -

Having a dust free house.

Being right every time, and making sure everyone knows it.

Knowing for certain whether there is a God or not, and whose side He or She is on.

Creating art or writing other people think is good.

Singing songs that other people think are good.

Winning.

Losing.

Having perky l’il breasts.

Hair colour.

Skin colour.

Remembering who wronged me when, and why.

Forgetting to apologise to those you’ve wronged.

Scatter cushions.

Our parents mistakes.

Our children’s mistakes.

Our own mistakes.

Succeeding at making others happy by failing to ever start trying to do what you suspect you were created to do.

Thinking the price for others’ happiness is your own misery.

Thinking the price for your own happiness is others’ misery.

Perfection.

Worrying about looking young.

Worrying about growing old.

Worrying what others think of you.

Worrying.

Winning. (I know I already said that but it’s really not important. Unless there’s a gold medal at stake, and there usually isn’t.)

Adapting your efforts to the opinions of critics.

Ignoring the advice of true friends, and very wise people.

Getting even.

Getting what you want.

Getting what you think you have coming to you.

And there’s more.

Isn’t there, friend?

Could well be you’ll work out what it is, by clarifying what it is not. Time is short. We only have the rest of our lives to work it out, remember?

*****

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Big hope. Little hope. Far off hope. Right here hope.

Cancer can become a kind of road block between us and all the things we planned to do, hoped would happen and perhaps even took for granted.

What goes on here? Well, it’s the death thing. With cancer comes the very real possibility of our demise. This is often the first impact the cancer has – the realisation we may have just encountered what could turn out to be the cause of our death.

And when you think you might be going to die in the foreseeable future, it kind of puts a damper on things.

Big things. Little things. Far off things. Right here things.

But we’ve planned that trip for ten years.

But I thought I’d be here to see my daughter grow up.

But I just bought new shoes.

Take care of your body first. Find out what you need to do about the cancer, and begin. Then take care of your hope.

There’s more than one way for cancer to kill you. If cancer takes away your dreams, desires and your hopes for the future, it’s found a new way to do it. Don’t let it.

One way to not let cancer kill your hope is to buy a ticket.

image credit: iStockphoto

Buy a ticket. Talk about your plans for how life will be when cancer is gone. You may not know when this part of your life will end, but you can still think about how things will look and the things you’ll do when it does.

Buy a ticket. A ticket to next week, next month or next year. Buy a ticket to your child’s wedding, to the birth of your grandchild. Buy a ticket to your 25th anniversary, to your 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th and 80th birthday. Buy a ticket to your graduation, or to your son or daughters graduation.

Buy a ticket. Make a dream poster on a large piece of cardboard pasted all over with magazine clippings of people, things and places which inspire you and excite you. Put it up where you can see it every day. Make your hope strong with daily exercise.

Buy a ticket. Literally. See the concert. Meet the author. Visit that place. See those sights. Definitely book the holiday.

Buy a ticket. For goodness sake, get the new shoes.

There is a difference between practicing hope however, and practicing denial. I once knew a woman diagnosed with late stage cancer who had all her energy focused on getting out of hospital and over to a clinic on the other side of the country which promised to cure her. That’s hope. However, she remained estranged from both her sons whom she refused to speak to, and also refused to hire a manager to run her business for her which was struggling since the day she left to go to the doctor on her lunch break, and never came back. She died leaving an argument between the sons over her will and a business which was forced to close down. That’s denial.

Buy a ticket. Create a stake in your future, in a currency which counts to you. Love travel? Plan the trip. All about family? See yourself with your grown children years from now. Imagine the outfit you’ll wear to your sons wedding. See the shoes you’ll wear. Write your speech.

I did. And stood up at my sons wedding and delivered it.

But what happens if that future never happens? What happens if cancer turns out to be the thing which ends your life?

The work we do on hope won’t be wasted. You’ll be all the time investing in people you care about and in your relationships, and just as importantly in yourself. You’ll leave a long, strong legacy of the evidence of who and what really mattered to you. And trust me, when you’re not here any more, this is all the people who love you will want to know.

Buy a ticket. A ticket to your future. You’re much, much more than what’s happening to you right now. Resist the fear. Invest yourself in ways real and unreal in a life far above and way beyond cancer.

*****

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