Life is Simple

My positive outlook has recently been challenged.  Although I was able to navigate several years of my life as care giver for a mother with Alzheimer disease, ovarian cancer for my sister, the death of each, and a broken foot I managed to navigate life without losing my positive outlook.  However, I recently received an abnormal mammogram which was followed by an MRI and then a biopsy. The good thing is that I don’t have cancer.  The bad thing is that I do need a double mastectomy. 

My doctors urged me to have the surgery soon so my procedure is now scheduled.  The surgery will be followed by a few days where my arms movement will be limited because I will have drains installed in each breast for at least a week. Once the drains are removed, my activities will still be limited for a week or two, and I just avoid thinking about the scars.

"I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions."

Steven Covey

Shortly after I received the diagnosis, I was driving to work and my thoughts wandered into unfamiliar territory as I began to think “What is the point?  Who would miss me if I just didn’t do the surgery and let nature take its course?  Why do I matter?”  The wave of depression that hit me was both sudden and unfamiliar.  This line of thinking is so uncharacteristic of who I am as a person that it took me a few moments before I realized there was a risk of sinking into a state of reflective defeat.  No Bueno.  I became angry with myself for even entertaining even a moment of that defeatist attitude and immediately decided that I had two choices,  I could surrender or I could look for the positive.  Since I believe  that everything in life happens for a reason, the choice was obvious.

Life is simple but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

I began to think of a friend who had breast cancer. Her mastectomy was followed by chemotherapy and the traumatic side effects that went along with the treatment. It occurred to me that I am so much more fortunate than many others with a mass in their breast.  I immediately felt a sense of shame for feeling defeated, even if it was for only a moment, because I don’t have cancer, I am not going to need chemotherapy, and they identified the mass before it either become malignant or invaded  the artery or my heart.

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is that quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow.' "

Mary Anne Radmacher

It occurred to me that life is simple but our perspective makes life appear more complicated than it really is.   Thanks to the media, the world today is saturated with messages that try to convince us what our life should be like, what we are all doing wrong, what we should look like, and what we need in order to be happy. These messages that encourage us to seek perfection only serve to shift the focus away from everything in  life that is good.  What I need to remember is that one person's idea of perfect may be another person's idea of a flaw. Who I strive to be needs to be less about what I look like and more about who I am.  A person who loses a limb but still finds a way to run a marathon, or a child battling cancer but is still smiling, may be physically imperfect in the eyes of some people but they are the epitome of perfection in my eyes.  Each time I see a homeless person who demonstrates kindness in spite of their circumstances I am reminded me that the perfect car means nothing to people whose primary concern is about trying to make it through another day.  Once our basic need for survival  is met, the rest is a blessing that can be easy to overlook if our focus is on someone else's definition of perfect.

"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you. They are supposed to help you discover who you are."

Bernice Reagan

When it comes down to a discussion on life or death, I have been reminded that life is about survival, family, friends, and those intangible things that make me happy.  This is how I thrive in spite of adversity.  I emerge from all of this with physical and emotional scars; but those scars are reminders that I am strong enough to endure any challenge and courageous enough to create my own definition of perfect.  Life isn’t complicated.  Life is simple.  It is my perspective that makes life seem complicated by creating expectations which have nothing to do with living a happy life.

"If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never have enough."

Oprah Winfrey