18+ General Discussion Forum

Taarash,

I know what you mean: life threatening illnesses are scary and sad when they affect people before their time. At least with an older person you can say, "Well they lived a long life and they had to die of something," but not so a younger person. (Notice how one's definition older keeps changing as you age, yourself.)

The good news is that many cancers have treatments that are much better than in the past and the survival rates are improving. I have a friend who had breast cancer over 10 years ago and she is still alive with no recurrance. I also know other people who weren't so lucky.

One of the lessons to draw from this is to eat dessert first, or at the very least, enjoy each moment to the fullest, don't sweat about the small stuff, and concentrate on what's important to you.

Life is a crapshoot, but I don't think of us as being squished like bugs. We can choose to behave in ways that improve our odds of living a long life, but even if you don't smoke, eat healthy, wear a seatbelt, etc. it's no guarantee that you don't get hit by a truck tomorrow.

In order not to drive yourself crazy about all the horrors potentially awaiting us, I think you somehow have to embrace life's uncertainties and not worry about it too much until misfortune knocks at your door. But even then some people can find a silver lining in the cloud.

Take Dave. He was a guy who lived life to the fullest in many ways but I think he was also kind of lonely. As I said in my essay, he was a little hard to take at times. He had plenty of people to dance and drink with, but maybe he didn't have any really close friends.

When he became sick, he didn't have much in the way of family, so the whole morris dance community rallied around him. He was overwhelmed by the show of support. Apparently he got to experience something in dying that he never experienced during healthy life. That doesn't make up for the fact that now he's gone, but it does give a bit of meaning to his death.

I guess the best we can do is hope for the best and be apart of communities that can offer support when the best is not what we get.

I hope your colleagues are lucky with their cancers and recover completely. Good luck to you too.

Dance on,

Marcia


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