Up Against A Hard Limit
One day at work last week, I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen in perhaps a year. I’d been out of the store on disability and our paths hadn’t crossed, so I noticed him heading to the express checkout lane and I went after him. I said hey man it’s been a while, how are you. He replied well, I just found out I have terminal lung cancer. It was matter of fact, really, and he said his spirits were good, in answer to my query. He was in a fighting mood, hoping to get maybe a couple of years beyond what the oncologists told him and then who knows what medical research might have come up with. He was open to possibilities but clear-eyed about the prognosis.
Kind of a disconcerting gut punch it was to hear dark news like that in a busy store in broad daylight with the sounds of commerce and people all around, unconcerned about his personal battle. I mused on it afterwards and thought that someone’s saying I have terminal cancer is like saying I’m going to die. Who could not say that? We all could walk up to a friend or acquaintance and say I’m terminal. The difference in this case is that it’s probably going to be sooner rather than later and he knows what the end game will most likely be. Without a similar medical diagnosis, we just have no idea.
All we know is that it is inevitable. Everyone of us is on borrowed time, even my one-year old granddaughter in Sweden.
Because of an article in Hmm Daily by Tom Scocca (Your Real Biological Clock Is You’re going to Die), I decided to go to the Social Security website and look up my life expectancy on their calculator. It’s at www.ssa.gov/oact/population/longevity.html in case you’re interested. Based on my gender and birthdate (no way to measure lifestyle or genes of course), I can reasonably expect to live another 18.8 years or until I’m eighty four and a few months. If I make it to seventy, I get another year added on plus a few months.
For the record, I’m planning on beating the odds, just like my friend with cancer. Clear-eyed about the probabilities, but open to possibilities, like those inherent in having had a centenarian grandfather and going to the gym and eating a lot of vegetables.
But, as Scocca says, we are up against a hard limit, ultimately. “This world devours every person and moves on. It does not stop moving, even as we pass through the middle of life telling ourselves it is the front end.”
The I Ching tells us that “the beginning holds the seed of all that is to follow.” To me that speaks to the utility of beginning a day with gratitude.
I’m on much firmer ground, looking forward at whatever my own hard limit is, when I keep at my gratitude work, in my own way, even when it might seem ridiculous to look for some good in what are perceived as terrible situations. The purpose of this blog is not to provide answers, but to invite anyone who’s interested to look over this seeker’s shoulder as he works this practice. I write over and over again that I’m grateful for another day never promised to me. What the hell else can you say?
There are plenty of people who have not been told they have terminal cancer, but will die before my friend does because of some unseen or unexpected event. It seems wise to spend as much time as we can saying thank you for the good in our lives while we still can.
