Open Heart
Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. It's not a date to celebrate, nor even one that I like to acknowledge, but I also can't ignore what it is to me, its significance and its sadness. I did feel sad yesterday. The world seems almost unbearably full of cruelty lately - children torn away from their parents at the very moment they hope to have arrived at a better life - a mother orca swimming with her stillborn baby on her back for weeks, unable to let him go back into the sea - the horrible abuse of innocents by the men of God entrusted to save their souls - a genocide being perpetrated against defenseless women and children, today, on this planet, without a finger lifted by those who have the might to stop it. It's hard to see any purpose or plan in so much suffering.
But then I think that the world has always been cruel, no more or less so now than at any time in human history. What is different is me. Becoming a mother and becoming a cancer patient are two events that I have begun to realize have changed my heart forever. In the words of the American author Gene Stratton-Porter, whose books I loved growing up, "Once a child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mother to all men, for the hearts of mothers are everywhere the same." Likewise, once you are forced to confront the fleetingness of your own life, you can never fail to be moved by the same fragility in others.
Life is easier when you are insulated from the pain of the world, as well as from your own pain. I would like to be able to read the news of the day with my old detachment and equanimity. When my baby calls for me in the night, I would like not to immediately think of all the babies in detention centers and refugee camps, calling for their mothers in vain. I would like to forget that I had cancer, and that the threat of its return will always be with me.
But for better or worse, this is what my heart is now - open, vulnerable, unprotected. I don't see how I could ever go back to objectivity and dispassion, and I don't think that I ever should. Ultimately, our goal can't be to have the easiest life - it must be to have a life of meaning. Whatever I have lost in tranquility in the last four years, I have gained in humanity.
But then I think that the world has always been cruel, no more or less so now than at any time in human history. What is different is me. Becoming a mother and becoming a cancer patient are two events that I have begun to realize have changed my heart forever. In the words of the American author Gene Stratton-Porter, whose books I loved growing up, "Once a child has beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mother to all men, for the hearts of mothers are everywhere the same." Likewise, once you are forced to confront the fleetingness of your own life, you can never fail to be moved by the same fragility in others.
Life is easier when you are insulated from the pain of the world, as well as from your own pain. I would like to be able to read the news of the day with my old detachment and equanimity. When my baby calls for me in the night, I would like not to immediately think of all the babies in detention centers and refugee camps, calling for their mothers in vain. I would like to forget that I had cancer, and that the threat of its return will always be with me.
But for better or worse, this is what my heart is now - open, vulnerable, unprotected. I don't see how I could ever go back to objectivity and dispassion, and I don't think that I ever should. Ultimately, our goal can't be to have the easiest life - it must be to have a life of meaning. Whatever I have lost in tranquility in the last four years, I have gained in humanity.
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