freyaday (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} freyaday) wrote,@ 2005-01-25 13:15:00 |
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anniversary (b)
What Cancer Can and Can’t Do
In sophomore philosophy class we had the question posed to us: if your hand were cut off, would you still be you? Of course, we answered. The seat of identity is not the hand. What if it were both arms, he patiently went on, and, for good measure, both legs, would you still be you?
The seat of identity isn’t in the arms or legs, we answered, but less ardently, knowing that we were falling for a trick but not really seeing it coming. What if it were both arms and legs and you had to have a colostomy, an oxygen tank to breathe, and a vocoder to speak, would you still be you? We were all young, healthy, immortal, beautiful. Such a thing could never happen. But if it did, we’d still be the same person, we were sure of it. Then the clincher came: how would people treat you? The same, the naïve young romantics claimed. Unfortunately, much differently, the not-so-naïve young pragmatists answered. And therein was the lesson. Identity has two components, the internal and the socially constructed. If a person lost his/her arms, legs, health, wholeness, or appearance, he/she would be treated much differently by society. It really wouldn’t matter what or who they were inside because, despite token exceptions like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeves, the handicapped are invisible, untouchable pariahs.
A mastectomy won’t affect a good marriage, the literature given to me claimed. Wigs have improved so much. The antinausea medicines are so much better. Reconstruction will be as good as new, maybe even better, if you get the boob lift on the other to match and the tummy tuck to provide the fat, and so sorry, we can’t take fat donations even from sisters or mothers to do the reconstruction…
What a journey. The new age crap says I am supposed to learn something or get gifts from this, so here’s a small list:
• Cancer cannot take away my personal identity, and people/friends who were put off my surgery or baldness can go fuck themselves because when the chips were down they weren’t there for me, so I have their measure. I have, unfortunately, very clear definitions of friendship at this point. I suppose this clarity of vision could technically be called a gift.
• Cancer can take away my physical health and mobility, but my disability is mild compared to others’ and I am receiving adequate care for it. I am not my body, and my religious background as a child taught me vanity is an evil sin anyway. As mentioned above, cancer and its aftermath have mostly rid me of vain, shallow people in my life.
• Cancer can take away my profession. Cancer cannot keep me from doing worthwhile other work.
• Cancer can take away my yoga practice. Cancer cannot take away my desire to do as much activity as is appropriate and possible for the state of my fractured spine. By forcing me to make careful choices, my values are clarified. I do not have to do things I don’t want to, and that is a freedom. This is also something that could be construed to be a gift.
• Cancer can take my energy, my time, my patience, my ability to care for my children and others. Cancer cannot take my ability to feel compassion, mostly because I now can say to so many, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been there, I know.”
• Cancer can take my emotional balance and mental clarity. I am supposed to take this as some sort of challenge or lesson, but my immediate reaction to this idea is “oh, yeah, well piss off!”
• Cancer cannot take my faith. If there is a literal rather than metaphorical God or gods/goddesses, then the joke is on me. I’ll call Him/Her/Them an incompetent, capricious idiot, spit in His/Her/Their face and walk proudly into oblivion. I am a capital-N Nature worshipper, one who responds to the awe and mystery of Nature in Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Thoreau, and understands the Truth that Tennyson spoke of, a Nature that is “red of tooth and claw.” People who build houses on riverbanks and then entreat some deity to deliver them from the floods are just idiots. It is the Nature of rivers to flood, and levees work better than prayers if they insist on building in stupid places. The life of a single human isn’t important to Nature as a Whole, so it’s nothing personal. The idea that some deity sent this cancer to me special delivery is just too horrid to bear.
It is not my place to teach the idiots of the world that cancer has no cure, only remission. I have learned to accept stupid comments with a calm, centered gaze and a fervent, sincere prayer that they get to live in their ignorance for a very long time. Perhaps that is what is meant by learning compassion. But I would much rather have had the lesson taught in the gentle Socratic cocoon of my sophomore philosophy class…
What Cancer Can and Can’t Do
In sophomore philosophy class we had the question posed to us: if your hand were cut off, would you still be you? Of course, we answered. The seat of identity is not the hand. What if it were both arms, he patiently went on, and, for good measure, both legs, would you still be you?
The seat of identity isn’t in the arms or legs, we answered, but less ardently, knowing that we were falling for a trick but not really seeing it coming. What if it were both arms and legs and you had to have a colostomy, an oxygen tank to breathe, and a vocoder to speak, would you still be you? We were all young, healthy, immortal, beautiful. Such a thing could never happen. But if it did, we’d still be the same person, we were sure of it. Then the clincher came: how would people treat you? The same, the naïve young romantics claimed. Unfortunately, much differently, the not-so-naïve young pragmatists answered. And therein was the lesson. Identity has two components, the internal and the socially constructed. If a person lost his/her arms, legs, health, wholeness, or appearance, he/she would be treated much differently by society. It really wouldn’t matter what or who they were inside because, despite token exceptions like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeves, the handicapped are invisible, untouchable pariahs.
A mastectomy won’t affect a good marriage, the literature given to me claimed. Wigs have improved so much. The antinausea medicines are so much better. Reconstruction will be as good as new, maybe even better, if you get the boob lift on the other to match and the tummy tuck to provide the fat, and so sorry, we can’t take fat donations even from sisters or mothers to do the reconstruction…
What a journey. The new age crap says I am supposed to learn something or get gifts from this, so here’s a small list:
• Cancer cannot take away my personal identity, and people/friends who were put off my surgery or baldness can go fuck themselves because when the chips were down they weren’t there for me, so I have their measure. I have, unfortunately, very clear definitions of friendship at this point. I suppose this clarity of vision could technically be called a gift.
• Cancer can take away my physical health and mobility, but my disability is mild compared to others’ and I am receiving adequate care for it. I am not my body, and my religious background as a child taught me vanity is an evil sin anyway. As mentioned above, cancer and its aftermath have mostly rid me of vain, shallow people in my life.
• Cancer can take away my profession. Cancer cannot keep me from doing worthwhile other work.
• Cancer can take away my yoga practice. Cancer cannot take away my desire to do as much activity as is appropriate and possible for the state of my fractured spine. By forcing me to make careful choices, my values are clarified. I do not have to do things I don’t want to, and that is a freedom. This is also something that could be construed to be a gift.
• Cancer can take my energy, my time, my patience, my ability to care for my children and others. Cancer cannot take my ability to feel compassion, mostly because I now can say to so many, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been there, I know.”
• Cancer can take my emotional balance and mental clarity. I am supposed to take this as some sort of challenge or lesson, but my immediate reaction to this idea is “oh, yeah, well piss off!”
• Cancer cannot take my faith. If there is a literal rather than metaphorical God or gods/goddesses, then the joke is on me. I’ll call Him/Her/Them an incompetent, capricious idiot, spit in His/Her/Their face and walk proudly into oblivion. I am a capital-N Nature worshipper, one who responds to the awe and mystery of Nature in Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Thoreau, and understands the Truth that Tennyson spoke of, a Nature that is “red of tooth and claw.” People who build houses on riverbanks and then entreat some deity to deliver them from the floods are just idiots. It is the Nature of rivers to flood, and levees work better than prayers if they insist on building in stupid places. The life of a single human isn’t important to Nature as a Whole, so it’s nothing personal. The idea that some deity sent this cancer to me special delivery is just too horrid to bear.
It is not my place to teach the idiots of the world that cancer has no cure, only remission. I have learned to accept stupid comments with a calm, centered gaze and a fervent, sincere prayer that they get to live in their ignorance for a very long time. Perhaps that is what is meant by learning compassion. But I would much rather have had the lesson taught in the gentle Socratic cocoon of my sophomore philosophy class…
