Shedding Identities, The Most Lofty Spiritual Act, The Power of Habits, and a Caution of Solo Lifestyles When Ill
As I mentioned last time (November 8), there are many different types of cancer. Even with the same diagnosis the cancer experience can be quite different. It is like there are different bugs causing each person’s cancer.
It is important to not compare stories. Their experience and your experience with you or your loved one will not be the same.
When I studied medical sociology in physician assistant school, there was an example of two young brothers given the same message in childhood. “Whatever your brother gets, you will get.” The reference was meant to encourage hygiene and not to play with your sibling when they are ill.
Years later in my homeopathic family practice, I encountered a real-life version of a fellow frightened because his older brother had cancer. He recounted how his parents used that identical phrase, “what your brother gets, you will get.”
Their lifestyles and belief systems were completely different. Multiple factors known to ‘turn on or turn off’ (think: up regulate or down regulate) gene and immune expression were vastly oppositional.
We must remember this. Yes, family medical history and gene expression is important, but also optional. It is totally mysterious how illness manifests.
[Keep in mind I am a non-smoker, vegetarian, non-drinker, pro-healthy lifestyle fellow recovering from stage 4 lung cancer. Go figure!]
This is why I love to share with you all that I am learning throughout my life about the mysteries of the mind and our immune system. Our attitude and lifestyle do create a huge split in experiences and outcomes.
Today I continue to pull back the curtain on how I process my situation and what I learned from those I served during my 40+ years of client care. My self-reflections, meeting with mentors and the great talks with my wife and family are still teaching me. This process has made a huge difference in my cancer experience and my life in general.
I also want to mention solo lifestyles by loss or personal intention. If we don’t have anyone or anything to antidote our unhealthy thought-loops and beliefs, we should seek out helpful solutions. Because, that which we don’t change, we choose.
While my journal posts go to much less than 100 folks, I do so hope you would share them within anyone under a spell of unhealthy solitude by asking them to sign up for the emails.
My teacher taught me that “the removal of fear is the most lofty spiritual act.”
Thank you.
The Power of Habits and a Cure for Prejudice
My history is not my destiny. However, when my mind’s unwillingness to see and know anything other than what out of habit it is used to seeing and knowing this makes it easy for the past to repeat itself.
When I can’t think greater than how I feel, this thinking-feeling loop can hold me back. In time, that is how my thoughts can run me, and my feelings own me. Luckily, self-awareness unlocks this blockade. All I need to do is realize how demanding deeply rooted habits are and how they keep me stuck in past preoccupations.
My own habits are not a passive phenomenon but rather a deeply engrained force denying and sabotaging my own self-examination and self-validation. If I let this go unchecked, the result is always pain. My only competitor to solving this is who I was yesterday.
Here are Mark Twain’s comments on the power of habits and his cure for prejudice:
“Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man but coaxed downstairs one step at a time.” In his book Innocents Abroad, he wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Scared and Cared
It is easy to be scared when facing long term illnesses and daily stresses,
especially when the status quo of care keeps shifting. During chemo a few weeks ago my brother-in-law Jeff suggested I remove the “s” from scared, shifting my scared feeling to feeling ‘cared’ for…by my family and friends.
It worked and it works every time!
Shedding the Identity of Being a Patient
Recently I voted.
Like everyone, I was asked for my identification.
It made me realize how much I have been working on shedding my old identity of the last few years. Am I still a patient or just a fellow in recovery? This is where ‘memory’ and socializing with others can either trigger me to fall back into identities that no longer serve me or offer me the chance to show what’s new.
Identity Shedding Using a Wheelchair
Recently, I made an announcement to my family with some well-rounded hubris and charm. We had all gathered with our tiny flock of granddaughters and I wanted to show off some signs and symptoms of my progress.
I was talking about shedding my identity of being a patient of any type.
And I wanted to share some observable changes in my daily life that I used to remind me that I was graduating from the past.
Approximately seven weeks ago, I completely retired my wheelchair. I even had our dear friend Josh take it to the basement. This is a true banishment because I’m not really doing stairs right now.
About four weeks ago, I retired my walker. While it is still in my bedroom for late night precautions when bathroom duties arise. It does not leave the bedroom. Since my eyes don’t adjust as quickly to the dark as they did 20 years ago, I’m not letting my ego put me at risk. I don’t move about the bedroom without my walker in the middle of the night. Otherwise, it is retired.
Two weeks ago, I retired my cane from daily constant use. It definitely travels with me outside of the house and transitioning up and down uneven surfaces in the yard or in the garage. Otherwise, I’m not using the cane in the house during the day at all.
If you live with someone challenged with health issues, please celebrate with them these tiny signs of graduation whatever they might be. Shedding unhelpful identities is tremendous for one’s self-esteem and looking forward to the future.
How “and” can make everything better
My mind and I live at the same address. I am constantly learning to live peacefully with a voice that believes, “If I think it, it must be true!” (Even though it usually isn’t.)
My friend Grant taught me how the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ can be used to heal and cure any fearful thought. When stumbling with stress, I use ‘and’ to introduce positive potentials ‘and’ possibilities into my internal discussions and opinion polls. Instantly life no longer seems so difficult.
Knowing that my mind believes whatever it thinks, I take much more command in editing and directing my internal dialogues with coordinating conjunctions.
I love word humor.
We were riding in the elevator with a pregnant lady. Suddenly she started shouting over and over, “Can’t, Won’t, Shouldn’t, Couldn’t, Didn’t, Isn’t, Can’t, Won’t, Shouldn’t, Couldn’t, Didn’t, Isn’t.”
Someone in the elevator roared back “what is wrong with her!”
I said it is simple. She is going into contractions.
I love word humor.
“The removal of fear is the most lofty spiritual act.”
Please share anything that helps,
Terri and Blair
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Fear is selfish.
Courage is selfless