NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER……
I HAVE PERMISSION TO PAY ATTENTION TO MYSELF
It seems that some folks pay attention to nothing else. Their lives are bordered on the north, south, east and west by …. self ….. and that’s all. They remind me of the man who prayed thus: “Bless me and my wife, our son, John, and his wife; us four and no more. Amen.”
Most of us who get cancer, though, aren’t like that. We’re “pretty good people.” We work hard. We feel guilty if we don’t get things done. We blame ourselves if things go wrong. We feel that we have to make the world a better place. We’re embarrassed if we’re not “making a difference.” For people like us, any attention at all to ourselves is “selfishness.”
Besides, we really are busy. We have jobs and families and friends and organizations. The whole world conspires to jam us in traffic and never be there when we telephone and to get in front of us at the supermarket. There’s just no time for self!
We’ve got cars that are past their oil change mileage and toilets that are fighting back and children who are tugging at our legs and …. Even in those spare moments when we look wistfully toward the unread books and recall the times we prayed or meditated, there’s no time to follow up.
So we’ve become machines instead of people, robots rather than persons, lists instead of lovers, date books rather than selves.
Now, however, there’s a clearing in the forest. It’s burnt over harshly, down to the stubble, but it’s still a clearing. It gives me a chance to see a wider view, a vision of the sky.
Now it’s OK for me to take time to visualize, to pray, to read, to nap, to sit, to stare, to meditate ….. to be.
A man dies and we hear someone ask, “What was he worth?” “Oh, probably half a million,” someone answers. Half a million what? Embraces? Prayers? Loves? Kindnesses? Sunsets? Bird songs? Walks? Meals with friends? “Of course not! Half a million dollars!”
Is that all someone is worth? Dollars? If it’s dollars, then it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s five or five billion. The same is true with all the other events and activities by which we usually measure worth. Did she make vice president? So what? Was he the star? Big deal! A forty-year pin? Big whoop!
It’s not what you do but what you are! That’s where this business of self comes in. My life has meaning not because I’m acceptable, but because I’m accepted, not because I’m lovable, but because I’m loved. I’m part of Life, a child of God. I am! I’m not a statistical summary – worked thirty years, married once, fathered two, made some bucks, watched some TV.
So now that I have cancer, it’s OK just to be. Somehow I have permission from myself and the rest of the world to concentrate on this self, in order to get well. In the process, I have a chance not just to get cured, but to get whole, to be who I’m meant to be.
By John Robert McFarland from his book, Now That I Have Cancer, I Am Whole
HOW MUCH ARE YOU WORTH? Are YOU worth a Million Embraces? A Million Prayers? A Million Loves? A Million Kindnesses? A Million Sunsets? A Million Bird Songs? A Million Walks? A Million Meals with Friends? If not, why not?
YOU WOULDN’T BE ALIVE IF GOD DIDN’T HAVE A PURPOSE FOR YOU. NO MATTER IF YOU’RE 30, 60 OR 95, GOD STILL HAS SOMETHING IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO DO AND TO BECOME!
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