"In no way is cancer a gift!"
The vehemence with which a member of my writing class made this assertion today caught me by surprise. First of all, she had misheard me, and projected on me her own animosity to the idea that there was some potential benefit in having cancer.
That territory is a dangerous place to navigate. So often I find there is a distortion that happens between the time I utter an idea and the moment it lands on the ears of the person with whom I am conversing. What I have attempted to offer is easily greeted not with openness and curiosity but rather with an impenetrable barrier of defensiveness. Rarely is my true meaning heard through the noise of that defensive armor. I've learned from such encounters that the best strategy is to back off.
In this instance, my comment followed the enjoyment of a humorous piece this woman wrote in class relating her recent visit to a cancer center.
"That was enjoyable," I commented, referring to my experience listening to her story. The minute the words were out of my mouth, however, I sensed that my meaning was less than clear. I knew that Bee misconstrued my remark.
I surely did not have in mind to say that CANCER is enjoyable. I simply wanted Bee to know that I enjoyed listening to her written piece. If I'd had a chance to elaborate, I'd have let her know I was referring to the tone of her writing, the casual way in which she was able to talk about having cancer without hyperbole.
I don't have cancer myself, and never have. However, I am much more familiar than I might wish with the challenges and emotional ups and downs that come with living with a serious medical prognosis.
It seems that today was one of those days where I seemed to keep digging myself deeper. In an attempt to clarify my earlier remark, I said. "Not every moment of having cancer is dark and onerous."
I'd barely managed to utter those words. Instantly Bee reacted, jumping down my throat, denying that there was an iota of truth to my statement. With a little distance on that moment, I'm amused though, since in the first place she shared an amusing anecdote about an experience she'd had in relation to her cancer. It was that sharing that had sparked our whole exchange. Surely if everything about cancer is dark, painful, and horrible she could not have written that piece. I understood that she was no longer in the state from which she was able to write the piece, and had moved into this defensive pose. Maybe that had something to do with the vulnerability of reading it out loud.
I've come to feel that health challenges, or for that matter challenges of every sort in my life, are also an invitation, an opportunity. There are a thousand benefits that I can mine from dealing with something dramatic, even life threatening. It's a chance to set or reset priorities. Roses smell sweeter, colors are more vibrant, when each day one is faced with deciding to seize the day.
This is not to say that I advocate the glad pursuit of suffering. Rather, it's about the universal human ability to grab an opportunity once it presents itself, and make the most out of the apparent crisis. While we cannot always chose the circumstances of the hand we are dealt, the choice of how to perceive and respond to those circumstances is available to us moment by moment.
Judith Poole, MA, director of Pooled Resources, has extensive experience conducting classes and teaching skills in writing, the breath, and management of subtle energy, emotions, and beliefs since 1986. As part of Healing Tao Retreats she leads a week-long self-development process each summer combining energy psychology, Qigong, energy medicine, and the use of sound and other vibrational tools. Recently, these festivals of inner work are housed at an awesome facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Judith is author of several books on subtle energy and healing topics which are available from her website (products.healingpoole.com
) or from Amazon.com.