Today is Cancer Survivor Day, which is a day I didn’t know existed until my mom texted me with a heartfelt message of gratitude.
It’s been almost ten years since I was first diagnosed with Stage III Melanoma. I will never forget sitting in a dermatologist’s office with my spouse, looking around at the doctor’s family photos, medical degrees, awards… so many accomplishments on display to remind him of the life he’d been blessed with. I was only twenty-three. I had not yet enjoyed the opportunity to start a family or earn degrees. I watched him squirm uncomfortably as he broke the news to us. I heard my wife ask questions. I felt her hand go rigid as we grappled to understand, stitches from the initial biopsy still itching on my leg. After, over the phone, I heard the adamant resolve in my father’s voice, the fear in my mother’s.
Basically, a small birthmark I’d had my entire life had gone sour, and when I casually mentioned that it was starting to look different to a friend named Chad, his insistence I go see someone saved my life.
My diagnosis was medically awkward. Signs of the cancer’s spread put me between different staging and experts disagreed over what next steps should occur. Against this backdrop of back-and-forth advice, the doctors left decisions up to me, as if somehow I’d know what was right for my body. In the beginning, I opted to lean on the side of caution, and the medical professionals were surprised as traces of cancer showed up in the “just in case” biopsy and the “to be safe” imaging.
Five years later, after what felt like countless medical bills, tests, and treatments, I sat in the car with my dad. He manages a medical imaging center, and I’d just completed a round of screenings with MRIs and PET Scans. One of his doctors called us on our hour ride home and spoke candidly, hedging that this of course wasn’t the official report, but that he wasn’t seeing any signs of Melanoma anywhere. It marked five years since the last evidence of my disease. It was a statistically significant milestone in that the rate of survival for Melanoma patients jumped up an astounding amount. If the cancer hadn’t recurred by that date, it was as close a confirmation as I could get to being cured.
My dad took a hand off the steering wheel and put it on my shoulder. I sat in his passenger seat trying to keep it together. All of the sudden, I was a teenager again, living in a memory of a road trip we’d taken together in his Mini Cooper. The road ahead held possibilities and opportunities. We got back to the house where my wife waited with my mother. It was the beginning of a new life.
I was lucky. And even though my diagnosis could have been far worse, I still experience survivor’s guilt. I don’t like to talk about this because others don’t get to enjoy that moment in the car with the hand on the shoulder and the candid doctor delivering such good news. I am overly aware of that. I walked through the cancer center countless times weighed down by the guilt that I had chosen not to go through radiation therapy, opting instead for a clinical trial with fewer side effects. I witnessed the people around me burn down the jungle to find the tiger inside them. I saw what it did to them. I received messages of support from social workers and invitations to participate in support groups or therapy programs. I never participated. Instead, I busied myself trying to live the most I could live.
It sounds crazy, but I’m grateful for all I went through. Cancer taught me some important lessons that have shaped my life in drastic ways. I share some of them now.
- If you believe in God, you must believe He is larger than the boxes we’ve made for Him
It is easy to name God and confine Him to whatever expectations you’ve made for Him. We construct palaces in our minds for God, and though those palaces are as magnificent as our imagination can accommodate, though we may imagine God as wise as we can, the whole point of God is that we can’t comprehend how vast and great He is. Human imagination will never understand. And so when we encounter those things that try us, that put our faith to the test, and we rush to either condemn or exalt ideas, or even people, that resonate or contradict our limited and minuscule understanding of how the world works, we may well find the easiest way to break God is to discover there are no more rooms for Him in the palace we’ve created to hold Him. - In bargaining with God, you may discover what you have to offer the world
Bargaining with God is all but inevitable. It happens in our darkest, bleakest moments when we’ve discovered how powerless we are to change our circumstances and how undeserving we are of a miracle. We dig down deep and try to bargain, searching desperately for something that a supreme deity may find valuable. But in that exercise, though our offering will inevitably be found wanting, we also unearth what we cherish most about ourselves, what kernel of potential we believe resides deep down within us. It’s in our hunt to find something to offer God that we uncover what is latently beautiful about ourselves. That is the gem we should have always held up to the world. - The present does not exist as a sacrifice for the future
Wise choices about the future abound. Saving for retirement or college accounts. Dieting now for greater health down the line. Taking jobs with difficult hours to gain experience for the future. These decisions are very wise if your top goal is a better future. The problem is these goals often sacrifice the present, and the future is never guaranteed. Life is not to be enjoyed only in retirement or only when you’ve finally landed that big job. Children aren’t only to be invested in once they finish high school. Prudent and wise decisions for the future are never a bad idea, but I include a consideration of the present in my definitions of wise and prudent. Living in a state that feels like waiting is no way to go through life. - There is no shield but humor
There are things we hold on to as a shield. They weigh us down. Whether it’s a job or a reputation or a comfort zone, we may cling to things because they help us feel safe in case life takes a dip. While some of these things can certainly help mitigate some of life’s issues, like a savings account or good insurance, they can also block us from the humbling, healthy understanding that the universe in all its might could crush us at any moment. We are too small, and we have no defenses against some tribulation. However, the human ability to laugh at our own misfortune is endless and empowering. Once, I sat in an MRI machine for my third round of imaging in a given day. I was about twenty minutes into the MRI lying there, motionless. The deafening buzzes and whirrings of the MRI were annoying and I felt some minor claustrophobia. They had provided headphones with music anyway. Between phases of the MRI, I could at least catch five, ten, or twenty second-long snippets of a song. The song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons started playing. I lay there and became overly aware of the contrast tracers they had me drink and the fact that it wasn’t safe for the technicians to stay in the room with me. One can cry or one can laugh. I laughed because, come on, what are the odds. - There are ways to multiply life: learning, reading, dreaming
We all have one life to live, but there are ways to manipulate how you experience the life you have. For example, studies have shown that the introduction of novelty slows down the perception of time. So much so, that even wearing your watch on the opposite wrist may give you the impression that a day feels longer. Life is full of these delicious little hacks. My favorites are learning, reading, and dreaming. Learning things gives us a greater appreciation for whatever we study. One day, I looked around and realized I loved being among trees and plants, but I couldn’t tell an Oak from an Aspen. I started to learn the names of trees, and suddenly, almost every landscape became a fascinating case study. In reading, you can experience a life completely different from your own, downloading the perspective of a character or author, and multiplying your experience. In dreaming, you can inject yourself with such passion and drive that mundane tasks are supercharged into delightful, almost gameified, activities. - Priorities are not made on a whiteboard or with words
When it comes to prioritizing things in your life, daily planners are helpful, brainstorming sessions might get you there, but writing priorities down is about five percent of the effort. Priorities are not decided in a moment, they are evidenced by daily activity and action. It does no good to say your health is a priority if you don’t set aside time each day to prioritize it. Calling something a priority without action is just an exercise in deceiving yourself. It’s a good intention. Good priorities start with good intentions, but it’s amazing how many of our life’s true priorities are unwanted and unplanned. - It is worth whatever grief results from giving your whole heart to life
Wanting things and chasing dreams is dangerous. You may fail. Even if you arrive at the place you set out for, you may lose whatever incentive got you there. But I firmly believe that withholding your will, affection, and attention is far more debilitating than whatever grief you experience from eventual loss. There is an opportunity cost to not giving of ourselves completely to life, to not taking full advantage of the opportunities around us. - Forgiveness, gratitude, and love are the greatest of all gifts
Finally, I believe that forgiveness, gratitude, and love are the pillars on which we can become our greatest selves. Having the courage to forgive others unburdens us from the hitchhiking leeches of the past. It is a shedding of skin so that our more beautiful form can emerge. Gratitude, ironically, emboldens us to take a greater serving of what life offers. It reminds us that we are owed nothing, and everything is a gift, even and especially the ability to face difficulty and grow from it. And love is power. It connects us to humanity. It renders our time and talent useful. It weaves from our connections with others a net capable of catching all the goodness in the world. It magnifies our compassion to see what we could never see before, and in this greater understanding, our cosmic footprint, our godlike presence in the universe grows.
I try to live these lessons. I fail often. I’m sure I will revise them as life continues, but if I can thank cancer for anything, it is the unique perspective it gave me to recognize these pillars as guideposts. Ambition and opportunity has tempted me many times to deviate, but I’ve never regretted adhering to these principles.
