Who knew?
Pancreatic cancer sneaks up on you. Boom! By the time the symptons appear, it's got it's grip on you and that's one of the reasons why it's so deadly. Pior to the back- and side- pain that started showing up a couple of months back or so, the only other symptom I can identify is a tendency towards sweats I've noticed for the last year.
But I wonder if my body knew what was happening and, in some way, was adjusting to what was going on with me. No, don't worry, I'm not going to get new-agey or anything. But I think it's pretty accepted now that our bodies do work in response to changes of which we may or may not be aware.
People have commented on "how well" I've been dealing with the news. I know what they mean although I don't think they're really grasping what's actually going on. However, I do feel that there was an evolution in my thinking over the past 12 months that, I think, has helped me cope with this. I started to read more spiritual thinkers across a range of faiths and no faiths, whether these were Richard Halloway, UG Krishnamurta, Jacques Derrida, Marcus Borg, Eckart Tolle or John Caputo. And what I was interested in with these people wasn't abstracts. I was obsessed with the idea of compassion, a concept that's all the more relevant to me as the days go past and to which I'll return. I was obsessed by our materialism, by what I saw as the emptiness of our culture. That's one of the reasons that I was reading the Bill Hicks biography and found out about his cancer, because he was someone who was dealing with this issues but in a popular, funny way. I thought a great deal about the Third World, about the environment...It's my usual mish-mash but it all seemed related to ideas outside my immediate and selfish reality.
So, was this my consciousness preparing me for cancer? Or just my mid-life crises? The honest answer is that there's no way I can know. Or is there? Mebbe I can just be aware of any kind of evolution in my thinking now?
But I wonder if my body knew what was happening and, in some way, was adjusting to what was going on with me. No, don't worry, I'm not going to get new-agey or anything. But I think it's pretty accepted now that our bodies do work in response to changes of which we may or may not be aware.
People have commented on "how well" I've been dealing with the news. I know what they mean although I don't think they're really grasping what's actually going on. However, I do feel that there was an evolution in my thinking over the past 12 months that, I think, has helped me cope with this. I started to read more spiritual thinkers across a range of faiths and no faiths, whether these were Richard Halloway, UG Krishnamurta, Jacques Derrida, Marcus Borg, Eckart Tolle or John Caputo. And what I was interested in with these people wasn't abstracts. I was obsessed with the idea of compassion, a concept that's all the more relevant to me as the days go past and to which I'll return. I was obsessed by our materialism, by what I saw as the emptiness of our culture. That's one of the reasons that I was reading the Bill Hicks biography and found out about his cancer, because he was someone who was dealing with this issues but in a popular, funny way. I thought a great deal about the Third World, about the environment...It's my usual mish-mash but it all seemed related to ideas outside my immediate and selfish reality.
So, was this my consciousness preparing me for cancer? Or just my mid-life crises? The honest answer is that there's no way I can know. Or is there? Mebbe I can just be aware of any kind of evolution in my thinking now?
posted by Brian at
2:34 PM
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