As many of you know the past 4 months or so have been a time when I have been working through my approach to the “rest of my life”, as I have put it. What I mean by that, is I have been looking for comfort when approaching each day and hopefully the many days that I have in front of me. This comfort is something that became more unsettled as I began to make the transition from being mostly Patient, to resuming many of the things I have missed and love that I can’t do while being in the core of my treatments. Both the personal and professional things would fall in this category, being more social and physically active, speaking at high schools, those kind of things that I was unable to do from July, 2001 till January or so really.
This unsettled feeling really hit a high when I resumed some of my work related duties as we delivered the second Coins for Cancer Drive in March of this year. At first I wondered why my fears and discomfort were more noticeable than in previous months, after all I was feeling better physically, able to do more, getting stronger everyday, and perhaps best of all I was able to get back out and connect with high school students and other community groups. Here’s what I have figured out…
Getting more active did bring awesome experiences, some of the same that I had before like connecting with others, and some new ones too, it also brought a whole new world of opportunity right in front of me. I do have the ability to see opportunity, and I love to find it and take advantage of it. Getting more active allowed me to see such amazing opportunities both for personal fun stuff and for work or professional fun stuff, and those opportunities were contributing to my discomfort.
I hope that we all know, everyone of us only has today, this moment, that is all we have for sure. Accidents happen every day to people everywhere, and we never know when they will happen to us, so right now is all we fully have. And being a Patient in my situation I have a heightened awareness of that, as there is a greater probability that I have fewer tomorrows than an average 26 year old. Generally speaking of course, because as I have just said whether you are 26 or 86, you never know when your last day will be. But because I have a heightened awareness and potentially a greater probability of not living as long as many of my peers those opportunities can take on a different view.
I have written in the past about constant motion, and people not stopping, whether it’s working all the time or something else that keeps them moving all the time. I feel people, to varying levels, do that to avoid pain. And as I got out in the world to see all the opportunities around me, I was beginning to get revved up to go in constant motion again. Inside me I figured that I had to go quickly, get things accomplished, the things I really do want to accomplish, I had to get those done quickly because I probably have less time to do them than other people would. Right?
Truth is we don’t know, I may be writing to you all when I’m 86, we don’t know.
What I do know is that if I did get back in constant motion, busy-bee, working too much, not taking care of me, all of me, then I won’t be around till I’m 86.
So I continued to work through my fear and unsettled feelings of wanting to tackle my opportunities all at once. And today I have realized that many of my opportunities are goals, objectives of mine that I really would like to tackle. But I am not willing to let outside accomplishments determine my success. Those of you who have been with me since the first week in November 1998 may remember me writing “Victory is not in question”, and I meant that very much when I wrote, still do. But when I wrote it I didn’t define Victory, many assumed it meant cure, and that was part of the definition, but not all of it. I ask you this, if I was able to touch another person’s life, make a Positive impact with my Cancer Challenge but I didn’t ever reach that cure goal, would you call my experience a Victory? How about touching 100 people, 1,000,000, but not living longer than 3 or 4 years?
From my perspective my experience would be an exceptional Victory if I was able to do that. Science has never determined whether or not I was victorious. I have determined my level of success, and I have done that by focusing on the inside, not the outside. So my approach to these new opportunities is now the same, my goals are adjusted and success won’t be determined by crossing them off the list, it will be determined by working towards them, one day at a time, in a way that sits with my core of honesty, integrity, and Positive Attitude. I had to remind myself that Life, like Happiness, Love, Faith and many other things, is a Journey – yes a Journey – not a destination, and amazing things have happened to my fear and discomfort once I made that shift, removing my attachment from the big goal, and instead focusing on enjoying the process of working towards it.
I am blown away by the change inside me as I have worked through the process of letting go of my “big” goals, and instead focusing on the process of getting there, focusing on the Journey. I still have goals, lots of them, and I’m sure I’ll add to my list, but my focus won’t be on tackling them, it will be on the process of tackling them. Hope that makes sense as it does to me.
Take care of you, and I’ll be back soon.
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
