Not silent, just industrious.
I have been busy having my own little Ultimate Australian Adventure!
Monday 15 November 2010
Thursday 4 November 2010
Clear And Present Danger
One clear and sunny afternoon, I am hurtling home along the eucalypt-green corridor of the busway. I am listening to music, and checking in on my favourite online communities, when this song drops into my ipod (click play to listen):
I open a post from one of my breast cancer sisters. T is a delightful woman who I know to be witty, compassionate, strong, honest, funny and always completely supportive. As long as I have known her, she has been living her biggest life, seizing the day, and following her joy, and encouraging us to do the same. So I am shattered to read that she is has been diagnosed with secondary disease. A scan has revealed metastasis to her humerus. A very un-funny bone.
While many women are able to live with secondary disease for many years in relative good health, it is considered to be a terminal health condition, with the attendant physical decline and pain, life limitations, and the unfathomable anguish of knowing the sorrow that will visit your loved ones. I don’t really know what this diagnosis means for T, and for all the other beautiful women who face advanced cancer, except that it will distil the best and worst of life experiences into a premature timeframe.
As I sit there, stunned, staring out the window but not seeing the world rushing past, I am washed with impotence at the onslaught of suffering. Cancer spreads, a child runs in front of a car, a house burns down, a gun goes off. So many people in so many lives, all open to the scathing wounds of disease, grief, injury, personal tribulation, or acts of unspeakable violence. We go about our daily industry, completely unaware that our fortunes, our health, our most crucial relationships may be upended, suddenly and irrevocably. We teeter at the brink of our own vulnerability and none of us are immune.
Sorry for the hurt
Sorry that the destiny
Seems to be the ever
Clear and present danger
I open a post from one of my breast cancer sisters. T is a delightful woman who I know to be witty, compassionate, strong, honest, funny and always completely supportive. As long as I have known her, she has been living her biggest life, seizing the day, and following her joy, and encouraging us to do the same. So I am shattered to read that she is has been diagnosed with secondary disease. A scan has revealed metastasis to her humerus. A very un-funny bone.
While many women are able to live with secondary disease for many years in relative good health, it is considered to be a terminal health condition, with the attendant physical decline and pain, life limitations, and the unfathomable anguish of knowing the sorrow that will visit your loved ones. I don’t really know what this diagnosis means for T, and for all the other beautiful women who face advanced cancer, except that it will distil the best and worst of life experiences into a premature timeframe.
As I sit there, stunned, staring out the window but not seeing the world rushing past, I am washed with impotence at the onslaught of suffering. Cancer spreads, a child runs in front of a car, a house burns down, a gun goes off. So many people in so many lives, all open to the scathing wounds of disease, grief, injury, personal tribulation, or acts of unspeakable violence. We go about our daily industry, completely unaware that our fortunes, our health, our most crucial relationships may be upended, suddenly and irrevocably. We teeter at the brink of our own vulnerability and none of us are immune.
Sorry for the hurt
Sorry that the destiny
Seems to be the ever
Clear and present danger
It is our normal urge, when faced with evidence of someone’s suffering, to want to turn away, to escape the terrible details. We insulate ourselves from the fullness of pain in our midst, by ignoring it, by diminishing it with stereotypes, by drowning it out with distraction or noise. I am torn between turning away and turning up. In the context of online community, this is the difference between opening a thread and absorbing it and replying from the heart, instead of clicking away. Those true heart-felt words are a conduit of energy and support that reach into real lives. I hope that sometimes I am big enough to stand with another person in that place of their pain, and really acknowledge the truth of their experience, so that they can let it be. Our only defence against suffering is our acceptance. Our only weapon against our fragility is our love.
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