Just be there

A friend (good in the actual sense of the word) was just diagnosed with breast cancer and it looks like she's going down the same path as me. Damn that prickly brambly muddy path. I can see her, about 100 yards behind me, on this path that I'm tripping on and I feel for her. She is behind me with her binoculars and too many maps that keep dropping and unfolding and falling out of her pack down into ditches. The maps are all written in old unreadable languages and they all conflict each other. She is shouting up at me across the canyon and I am shouting back encouragement. She is being inundated with advice and good wishes, and she has many many friends who are surrounding her and love her. This is very good. I also feel for her because she is in the twilight zone of surrealism where you feel completely bizarre.

I guess I'll stop talking about her now and talk about me. I remember when my diagnosis first happened to me. It might've been the hardest time. Or at least I thought it was, now I think being sick with chemotherapy is the hardest. But stay with me - I may change my mind. Anyway in case you run into a new person newly diagnosed, or a person having a really frightening time (death of someone they love, news of a horrible event far away, divorce, a terrible break up, fear for a child in Iraq, news or fear about a possible awful disease, a terrible injury, panic, great pain...or any human tragedy) - I can tell you a few things, from MY perspective: I do not like it when people say that things happen for a reason, or  that god never gives you more than you can handle, or that a whole bunch of people that I don't know  (and who do not know ME) are praying really hard for me. I feels creepy to me and it feels like a lie. I don't mind positive thoughts and people thinking and caring about me, in fact I love that. Of course. Common sense.

I am not against prayer. I think the word "pray" is beautiful and that it represents a stillness, a meditation, a place of serenity inside each person, that is their way to connect to the greater universe. Each person chooses their own way to pray: Sitting by a river, staring at horses in a meadow, fishing, Islam, yoga, Paganism (root of most modern religions), nature, Satanism, poetry, Buddhism, Hindusim, Jainism, Woden, painting, photography (Tracy - well he does other art too of course), art (any), Wicca, studying insects, The Church of Scientology, Mormonism, The Book of Mormon, farming, shamanism, gardening, worshipping buffalo, body-building, meditation, cooking, yoga, running (Jara), Judaism, Hoa Hao, music (loud trancy dubby electronic music calms me), Bach (that too), Budweiser, drugs (most cultures do this), Christianity, sex, physics, Greek gods, Navajo mythology, math, string theory, the theory of everything, and on and on in an infinite number of ways, many of which are unknown except to the one self. Even the word universe, an old word, tells us this: one truth.

I am open. I am open. I am open. If you want to pray to your god, even on my account, then of course that is fine with me. If you are thinking kind thoughts about me and you care then I shall thank you and I shall love it.  

Do whatever you want.
 
I think that the chatter toward a person with cancer is more about the speaker than about the sick person, and it's a sort of a fear-based freak-out distraction defense mechanism OH MY FUCKING GOD I HOPE THAT SHIT NEVER HAPPENS TO ME! OH NO DID I JUST THINK THAT? OH NO I BETTER START SAYING ALL THAT GOOD STUFF SO GOD WON'T BE MAD AT ME HERE GOES BLAH BLAH BLAH. Now that I think about it I am kind of giggling (will god strike me down - of course not) and it's kind of funny and I find myself feeling a bit sorry for anyone that feels like they have to go into Hallmark card mode. Actually this whole thing is kind of funny and absurd. Life is absurd and that's ok.
 
So all I am saying is think about the person when you talk. Sometimes words can be scary to a hearer of the words even if the speaker of the words does not know this. It takes awareness.

We are 70 trillion atoms that coalesce together. Starting with one atom and then one cell, or two, beginning with Mr. Egg and Mrs. Sperm. They turn into those 70 trillion atoms that stick together for 70 or 80 or 90 or 100 years and then fall apart. Entropy. No one knows why.

Cancer does not happen for a reason and when someone gets it central casting does not suddenly cast them into the role of "superstar fighter" or "cancer's ass kicker" or "amazing wonderful angel of a super great person that will inspire us all." Cancer happens every day, quietly, to lots of people - some of which are really wonderful people that you like, and many of which are just regular boring people, and some of which are assholes that you would not like at all. So please do not stereotype all people who have cancer as any one type of person who needs any one type of communication. We are still just who we are.

If you want to be helpful to a person flailing, just be there. Go there. Listen.

I like Alanis Morrissette and the lyrics to this song. If we can approach being like this - then yeah, that's helpful:

You Owe Me Nothing in Return

I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it

I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it

You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I'll hold it

You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won't judge it

(and there are no strings attached to it)

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

 You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I'll lose you and I'll hear it

You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss I'll empathize with

You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion I'll hear it

You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis and I'll hold it

(and there are no strings attached)

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

And no I do not claim to be at all even one tenth of the amazingness that the Dalai Lama is but I aspire, and I like to think about his words and his smile.