THE CANCER QUESTION

I don't know about you and your friends, but one subject that eventually comes up with people of a certain age is "What route would you take if you found out you had cancer?"

Sadly we have too many examples of other people to look back upon and contemplate. As Gretchen says , "It would certainly depend on what kind of cancer it is." Yes, but. We really can not know. For me it would depend on the outlook, where I was living, who was around, how much money I had. We have all heard about people who had dire diagnoses and drank carrot juice and got better. We know the friends who went on the medical trip all the way and had terrible deaths. We also know the carrot juice person who dies and then everyone says they should have had chemo. And the chemo person who died and then people said the chemo killed them. They should have eaten raw foods and shot up Iscador. Then there are the people who blame the person...too many negative thoughts, too much butter, salt, sugar, depleted uranium. As if.

I guess my point is how the hell can we judge others? If we don't know the karma of another person, if we don't know their deepest strengths and their worst fears. If we haven't walked in their shoes, who are we to judge? Of course, some choices look a lot harder than others, but that is true about anyone we look at. Think about relationships. Think about love. (Hello Burt!)

People chose the strangest people to love. Strong women chose men who suppress them or hurt them or put them down. Men chose women who boss them and dominate them and treat them like children. I mean smart men. I mean smart women. How can we look and judge what the plan is for others' lives?

At Emerson College in Sussex, England one of the teachers of Anthroposophy talked about nuns and monks as people enjoying a "sleeping incarnation." I took offense at this. I think it reflected some middle class middle European world view that work in the world was good and a life of contemplation was nothing. Maybe that was envy. Maybe he was stupid. But, for some, a life of contemplation could be torture, or it could be escape ,or it could be bliss.

And a horrible, to my eyes, lover in someone's life could be just the challenge they need to grow or to learn compassion or to erase some old shit karma. The same with their cancer, the same with any choice that we can't understand. I think pop psychology has sold us a fake idea that we can all be happy all the time if we can adjust our medications properly. We really have to do the work of finding contentment and judgement from others doesn't support this . I am going to try and listen to my own voice today.