April 23, 2014
I just listened to a podcast interview with Eve Ensler, the author of the Vagina Monologues. This podcast was focused more on her experience with cancer than on the monologues.
Here’s my take-away:
Many of us will get cancer.
If not cancer, we’ll get something else.
In 2006, my year of the surgeries, I experienced both.
None of us is going to outwit death – although certainly there are people spending a lot of money on schemes to prove me wrong. (And don’t get me wrong—if they figure it out, I’ll be jumping on that bandwagon—life’s way too short from my perspective!)
We have a choice.
We can use what life hands us in one of two ways. We can resist it and fight it and exhaust ourselves either trying to get the upper hand or conversely trying to prove that it has the upper hand and we’re powerless.
Or we can meet it, feel it in our bones, and then figure out how to dance with it, so that it can touch us and teach us what we’re here to learn…who and what we really are.
Much love,
Robyn, whooooa, over my head here, I think. I read this twice, once yesterday, and then again today, First time I thought it seemed profound (and it may be), and made sense in light of my experience. Today, it made me pause, sort through the implications, and realize I need to stop being lazy, and think this through. I “feel” (yeah, I’m a guy, and I’ve learned I feel things) there is more to this observation by you than I first “believed.” For me, feelings have been difficult to articulate. It takes work, and darn it, I’m supposed to be retired from work. But working on myself has become the work I embrace, because it reveals who I am, what I really desire in life, and as you beautifully state, “teach us what we’re here to learn.
Love your ideas here, Dick. Your experience is my experience, in that when I stop, and am really present with stuff, it takes on deeper and deeper meanings. Thanks for your thoughtfulness…
Dancing is a lovely aspect of moving through life! xo
Yes, when I remember to dance with it I’m automatically pulled back into the present moment.