If you recall the happiest moments in your life, they are all from when you were doing something for somebody else.
Desmond Tutu
Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi
If you want to be miserable, think of yourself. If you want to be happy, think of others.
Sakyong Mipham
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
Last year, a stranger gave me this special regal geranium plant. It was just leaves when I got it, but I could tell from the leaves what it was. It was a variety of geranium that I wanted to grow, so I was pretty excited to get one.
I spent the last number of months looking after it, making sure it had what it needed to thrive and I was rewarded this. Definitely a showstopper in the yard.
I’ve been having this conversation a few times with my family as of late, most notably with my teenagers. Teenagers are at a transformation point in their lives, so it can be pretty easy to have conversations like this. But, I think it’s an interesting question for everyone.
What kind of person do you want to be?
When I was working and walking around the job, I would be constantly thinking. I had a complex job and being a supervisor, it was part of my job to figure things out and set up people with tasks for the day. Come to my knowledge, I tend to frown when I’m thinking.
“Why are you grumpy all the time”, someone asked me.
“What??? I’m not grumpy”, I replied.
“You walk around frowning a lot”.
“I do? I’m just thinking”.
Without my knowledge, I had become a grumpy person and that’s not somebody I want to be. I started consciously walking around with a smile on my face and all of a sudden I wasn’t a grumpy person anymore (although, I’m sure I still frown think from time to time).
We had a new neighbor move into the neighborhood last year, a few houses down from us. The husband (I’ll call him Fred for this story) and his wife are probably in their 30s and they just had their first child. We are fortunate to live at the end of a quiet street and all of our neighbors have multiple children, ages between 4-17. The road dead ends, so it’s a safe and perfect place for children to play.
Shortly after Fred moved in, he started grumbling and fighting with his neighbors on either side of his house about things he was unhappy with about their houses and yards. Fred also seems to like his drink too much at times and caused some late night disturbances with the neighbors across from him. As you can tell, he was quickly making friends.
After they had their baby, as any parent could tell you, the beginning months can be a challenge, especially for first time parents. Their baby is sleeping or not sleeping at all hours of the day. Fred has decided the whole neighborhood has to be quiet while the baby is sleeping during the day, especially all the neighborhood children playing outside. He has taken it upon himself to come out and yell at the kids for playing, which of course isn’t going down too well with the rest of us.
What about the garbage trucks collecting garbage? Delivery people? People cutting grass? Umm, ok….seems ludicrous to me. I get if the kids were being excessively noisy or obnoxious, but they aren’t actually being that loud.
Of course, after hearing about this man yelling at my son, I wanted to march down to his house and tell him a thing or two (that happened, but not by me). But then the thought came into my head, does he realize that he is the neighbor in the neighborhood that everyone hates? (I don’t hate him, I actually appreciate the learning experience).
It would seem to be more constructive to ask him if this who he wants to be (and to tell him about white noise machines, like fans or air purifiers 😜). Maybe he doesn’t know the neighbors despise him and are praying for him to sell his house and move out. I’m sure there is more to Fred than I know, but to the neighborhood, he’s the neighborhood jerk. I doubt that is who he would like to be.
I recently watch a show on Netflix called Mission Joy- Finding happiness in troubled times. It was about the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, their lives, challenges and why they are joyous despite having every reason to be bitter and be a complainer. It was a conscious decision not to be that way and live life joyously and spread that joy. I highly recommend the show. It was just a treat to watch those two interact, laugh and be brothers despite their religious differences.
The main conversation I was having with my children, was about complainers. Complainers are interesting people, because they always can find something to complain about, and it usually doesn’t take long for them to start once a conversation starts.
One of my kids was in the living room, and they were complaining about this and they were complaining about that. Finally, I had enough and exploded out, “why don’t you do something about what you’re complaining about instead of complaining about it”. (Dex might have had something to do with my explosion).
Complaining does nothing constructive, other than driving everyone around you crazy and not wanting to be around you. If something bothers you, do something about it. A person could spend more time and energy complaining about something than it actually takes to rectify the situation. (Of course, by my previous example, there are better or worse ways of doing something about things).
My wife and I were talking about complainers and she poised the question, “Do complainers, know they are complainers?” Briefly I thought and said “I don’t think they do”. I think what people who complain excessively are after, is attention.
I asked my children, “Do you want to be a person who stays in one place and just complains about everything in their lives or do you want to be a person who takes the lead, overcomes things and can change the world around them? Who do you want to be?”
Toxic people come up when you are dealing with cancer, more specifically, not being around toxic people when you are trying to recover from cancer. I do believe that, that’s completely valid and good advice. Toxic people are hard to be around when you’re healthy.
Then the thought occurred to me, what about toxic patients?
“God, why won’t this guy just die already!”
Certainly, anyone who has a chronic illness has a good excuse to complain. But to the point, where everyone is sick of you? One of my goals is not to become a person like that. That’s not who I want to be.
Early on in my cancer journey, about three years ago now, I went to India for about a month for Panchakarma treatment. The treatment is essentially purging your toxins (which can include mental toxins) and having your reset button pressed. I had just gone through the wringer with chemo and still having the mental struggles that come with cancer.
I wasn’t able to get a room at the clinic in India, so I rented a room a short distance away and took a tuk tuk back and forth. On the tuk tuk trip, sometimes I would see a crippled man on the corner, shirtless with a ragged cloth around his lower half. It looked like his legs had never worked from birth. He would be sitting on the ground, on his torso, with his skinny twisted legs folded behind him for probably hours.
The image of him is burned into my mind. From my point of view, I had been dealt a bit of a bum hand with myeloma. BAM, some perspective had just slapped me upside the head. What do I have to complain about? All of a sudden, I knew I had and will continue to have, a better and less challenging life than this person, myeloma and all. From now on, when ever I feel like complaining about things, an image of this man with his twisted legs, breathing in tuk tuk exhaust, pops into my head to remind me to be grateful for what I have.
I met a number of amazing people on that trip to India. Two that stand out in my mind were a Buddhist Lama and his interpreter monk. I have been blessed to have met and spent time with some very holy people in my life. These people have a presence about them and just being in the same room as them, you know that you are in the presence of someone really special. This Buddhist Lama is one of those people. But, this particular little story is about his interpreter monk.
She (yes, it’s a she, I generally think of monks as men) was born with a rare heart condition. She was very small and weak as a child and was always getting sick, because of it. She was so sick and weak one time she couldn’t get out of bed for months. She kept taking Tibetan herbs and praying, and she eventually got stronger and better enough to get up and go on with life, but still had this heart condition. She saw western medical doctors and had multiple heart surgeries, but the condition is not curable. Her heart can stop beating at any moment and she will die.
I did not know any of this when I first met her. She has one of the best, brightest smiles, that I’ve ever met and she is always smiling. How could this person exist, who is so full of life and happiness, literally have their heart stop beating at any moment? Shouldn’t she be grumpy, gloomy and miserable? Curled up in their bed, crying? She was the complete opposite!
Again, what do I have to complain about? She is a person who I would like to be like. She chose to be this happy, amazing person and not be consumed by what her body is doing. She has heart pains and challenges but sloughs it off, speaks many languages and be an translator for a important Lama. We had many conversations about life in the monastery, food and movies (she’s a big movie lover).
I’m in the yellow, the Lama’s interpreter, my Sri Lanka friend and the Buddhist Lama on the right
People will either show you who you want to be or who you don’t want to be. Things aren’t always easy, adversity comes in all forms, and everyone has it at points in their lives. Having cancer is hard. Having chemotherapy is hard.
Do I have the right to complain? Yes, I probably do. Do I want to? No, I don’t. Do I want to be afraid of cancer, afraid of it coming back, grumpy, a jerk, and someone that people don’t want to be around? No, I don’t. Anybody can justify doing/being anything.
Do I want to be happy and smile in the face of adversity, be a good person, a good example for my children and lead the way? Yes, I do. It’s who I want to be. It is my choice. Everyone has that choice. It is up to all of us to decide who that person is.
Appreciation is a beautiful, soulful quality available to everyone in every circumstance—being thankful for life’s little treasures, grateful for the opportunity to begin the day where you are, appreciating the perfect place your karma has brought you to.
Appreciation is life-giving. Depreciation without appreciation is heartlessly destructive. Yet, it is the all-too-common way of our times. When something is done that is good, helpful or loving, it is often overlooked, treated as something expected. No acknowledgment is shown, no gratitude expressed. But if a shortcoming is seen, everyone is swift to point it out!
The wise ones knew that all people possess freedom of choice and the willpower to use it. Today that freedom is usually used, unwisely, to downgrade others, as well as oneself. Ignorance seems to be almost as all-pervasive as God. We find it everywhere and within every situation. It does not have to be this way.
Gratitude is a quality of the soul. It does not depend on how much we possess. Its opposite, ingratitude, is a quality of the external ego. When we are selfless, we give thanks for whatever we have, no matter how little or how much. When we are egotistical, we are never grateful or satisfied, no matter how much we have.
It was a cold and windy night. My cousin Soren had decided to take his wife and family on a holiday. They had a spare room in the house they rented and invited me to come along. It was an odd vacation home. You had to take a boat to get there because it was on a tiny island the middle of the sea.
After we got warmed up and our arms recovered from all the rowing, we started settling in. I found my room, it was on the second story of the house overlooking, well of course, the sea. I dropped off my belongings and headed back down stairs. The rest of the family was sitting around a tall dining room table on black stools.
“What should we have for dinner”, Soren asked
“I want pizza!”, cried my niece.
“I want roasted vegetables with quinoa!”, cried my nephew (yeah right, good one).
“I want a drink”, cried my cousin.
All of a sudden, there was a roaring boom and the power went out.
“It’s probably just the gfci breaker” I said (of course the whole house is gfci protected being on a tiny island, surrounded by water, safety first).
I got up to check the electrical panel, but I stumbled backwards, because there was a big hairy man standing there, check that, this is my story, a beautiful woman standing there. (Hmmm…. My wife might read this, never mind, a big hairy man it is).
My eyes met the big hairy man’s eyes.
“I’ve been looking all around for you, Jothi” he said.
“You have?”
“I need to tell you something” he replied. Hmm… I thought to myself, what could it be?
“You’re a Cancerer” He said.
“Wow, that’s great news” I exclaimed. Of course of was lying, having no idea what a Cancerer was.
“Well, can I be one too?” asked Soren
“No, you are a Nuggle. Non-cancer folk”
“Jothi, We need to get you to Perpendicular alley and get you all signed up and ready for the adventure forthcoming”, said the man.
“Perpendicular Alley! Wow, that sounds incredible!” Although quietly in my head I was thinking it would be nice if it was a more interesting or flexible shape. “Let’s go!”.
And before I knew it, I was all signed up and on the program, I didn’t even fully know what exactly was going on, my life forever changed.
Please excuse my silly story parody. It’s been bouncing around in my head for awhile.
Have you ever noticed how people treat you different once they know you have cancer? It seems like either they can be overly sympathetic because they think you’re about to die and pity you or they suddenly don’t want to have much to do with you. “The very thought of your cancer make me feel so uncomfortable, that I can’t be around you”. Just like that, people can just melt out of your life. Which is fine, truthfully it’s best not to be around people who are like that. Their problem is within themselves.
I really like the song “Best Fake Smile” by James Bay. There is nothing like getting a fake smile. Please take it with you and go find what makes you happy and have a great life.
Well, to be fair, I’m not the same person as I was prior to cancer. Things seem clearer, simpler, to me. There is a new level of appreciation and gratitude for life. I also don’t seem to have patience for pettiness, selfishness or complainers. Not that I don’t have those things show up within myself from time to time, I don’t have patience for them there either.
I have met some amazing, chronically ill people in the last few years. Their ability to keep going with a gusto and still keep smiling with the challenges they go through on a daily basis is inspiring.
I recently watched a show about a 12 year old boy, who has sickle cell disease. Sickle cell disease is a condition where your red blood cells are not round, but in the shape of a sickle.
The consequence of that are fatigue, early cell death causing anemia or blocked blood flow causing pain.
There is no cure for sickle cell disease. Treatments include chemotherapy and blood transfusions.
Towards the end of the program, the interviewer asked the boy, “Do you wish you never had sickle cell disease?” The boy sat there quiet for a minute in thought and said “No”. I think that surprised the interviewer and he asked why. The boy said “sickle cell made me into the person I am today and it gave me a greater appreciation for life and what I have.”
“Wow”, I thought to myself. This kid is my hero! He is wiser than half the people you see walking down the street. Amazing people are everywhere and come in all sizes. Some light bulbs just burn brighter than others.
So the next time you pity or decide you aren’t comfortable with a cancer person (or other chronic illness person) in your life, look inside yourself and remember you could be losing out on someone who is truly remarkable.
Carrots Over Cancer 