No More Messing Around

For years, I've taught the work of philosophers and thinkers who insist that in order to live well, we have to face the reality of death.  And not just any old death - our own, individual death.  Socrates, the Stoics, Epicurus, Buddha, Chuang tzu . . . many others - they all have their own distinct way of presenting this lesson.

This has always made sense to me on an intellectual level, and even on a personal level to some extent.  Like most people, I've experienced loss in my life due to death.  And every time someone close to me dies, especially if the death was sudden or unexpected, I hear myself and others talk about how life is short, we should all make the best of it, and so forth.

And then usually we all go back to our regularly scheduled life programming.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with cancer - a thymoma, a cancer of the thymus that is rare in adults.  It's a big lemon-sized tumor sitting there in the upper right side of my chest.  All indications, so far, are that it's treatable and that I'll recover to resume my life.  Fortunately, I'm being cared for at the most famous and well-regarded cancer center in the world.

But let me just say:  there's nothing like a cancer diagnosis to get you to stop jacking around in your life, wasting time on things that don't matter.

I've been more focused on the things that truly matter to me in the last few weeks since the diagnosis than I have been in the last several months.  Why?  Because suddenly I have a concrete realization that I don't have much time.  I'm not expecting to die from this cancer or during the treatment, but still . . . this treatment alone will take me out  of commission for a while and, well, I've got things to do.

I've got people to see, books to write, websites to build, and relationships to savor!  I've got to get as much of it in as possible before I go "under the knife" because who knows when I'll be able to get back to it?  And, truthfully, I don't really know how life will be for me afterwards.  We never know the future of our lives, do we?

So, I think I get a little more viscerally what the philosophers are saying about death and facing our mortality in order to live well.  I'm sure this is why people who have near-death experiences come back from those experiences and completely change their lives.  They quit their jobs, start a wacky business based on their passions, get out of bad marriages, start new ones, move to the other side of the world, learn to pole dance, sell all they own to live out of a backpack - all sorts of radical things.

They get it.  Big time.  They get that not one of us has nearly as much time as we think we do to be and do what is ours to do on this earth.  Right now - as you read and I type - we have the most time we'll ever have again in this life.  From here, the clock winds steadily down, and there's not one of us who won't die, some of us far sooner than we think.  I have to believe that if we truly lived mindful of that reality every day, we would live differently.

I know I'm living differently, at least these last few weeks.  I haven't had a near death experience, but to hear the word "cancer" applied to me feels close.

I'm not grateful for this cancer.  I'll be happy when that malignant lemon is out of my body and burned in a medical waste incinerator somewhere.

But, if an enlivened sense of urgency about doing what matters in my life is a lesson I can learn from this experience, well . . . I'll definitely take it.