My Short Jog (with cancer) At 23
Josh Lasker
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I stare at my excel spreadsheet then back into space. My mind races: “What the hell am I doing here? Why did I get to come back to work so soon? Why did I have to leave work at all? Did I deserve this? Why did I get spared from more? Should I go to the meeting on retirement planning? Maybe I should just retire today. Should I buy a sailboat and leave to go…somewhere? Maybe I should go back to school? If I need chemo next week will I regret what I did today?
Many of my existential questions are the same as before I was sick and are shared by many of my friends at age 23. I know I’m not that different. But while they have barely changed in kind, they have certainly changed in intensity. I find myself incredibly at peace more of the time than before, but the times when I feel anxious are much more intoxicating. As one of the millions who has looked to Dr. Viktor Frankl’s work for wisdom in times of hardship, I’ve been trying hard to not let the pain and suffering that led me here to have happened for nothing in hopes of finding sobriety. It’s starting to work. Even if this writing does nothing for anybody, just attempting to find wisdom in the suffering for the chance that it could help someone else has started to alleviate some of my existential angst by creating some purpose for me. As Dr. Viktor Frankl once wrote, “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” But like most things, it is total lunacy to take the cause to one extreme or another — complete neglect would render the experience an utter waste while devout introspection would prove ignorance to its practical functionality and cause more pain. I’m trying to do this delicately. I also know though, that I owe more than a lifetime of kindness to so many people who took care of me, and while I can never pay it all back, I can at least try to write what everybody helped me learn in an attempt to pay it forward.
And I share that attempt with you:
I can remember playing with the contrast settings on an old TV: turn the contrast off, and I saw nothing but gray. Slowly increase the setting to “max” contrast (whatever that means) and people began to emerge as vague shapes; their heads began to round, and soon they had eyes and a nose and a mouth with color. While I have no idea who in their right mind would turn the contrast way down to stay, that is besides the point. TV manufacturers got the lesson in life early though: life only exists in contrasts. Nothing can be known by itself. Darkness cannot be known by itself: we see it only by changing it and introducing light. We only begin to truly understand something black as it fades to gray, then to white. If all we see is black, we will never know what black is. We only see colors by juxtaposing them with other colors; we only understand the sound of a friend’s voice as something different from the noisy street where you’re talking. A whiff of pumpkin pie that permeates the crisp autumn air changes the smell of the frosty grass and leaves into something sweet. Without that change, a delta, there is nothing to see. We know nothing. The greater the delta, the greater our perception of a total scenario. To understand what it means to be the tallest man on earth we first need to understand what it means to be small. The smaller our referenced small person, the greater our perspective and understanding of substantiality.
So it was only when I lost all strength, when there was a complete absence, that I began to actually understand true strength.
After I was diagnosed with cancer but before I knew if or to what degree it had spread, I sat paralyzed by uncertainty. I had always imagined that if I ever had to confront my own mortality I would immediately reject fear and become more alive and passionate while singing aloud Tim McGraw lyrics at the top of my lungs: “I went skydiving, I went Rocky Mountain climbing, I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.” But instead, I sat idle. I didn’t finish a single book cover to cover; I barely got a start on a new tv series averaging 1 episode every 3 days; I didn’t write. I spaced out. I was angry. I was sad. I barely cared about anything. Contrary to what I originally imagined, thinking I might die soon didn’t make me eager to do more. It (now, embarrassingly) made me want to do less.
But slowly as my prognosis got better I began to care more — to want more. The first things were simple. I wanted to be free of pain. I wanted to walk without help. I wanted to be free enough from mental anguish so I could focus. I wanted to be close to my existing family and friends and didn’t care about meeting new ones. I now understand why older people who are closer to death don’t want more friends but instead grow closer to their current ones, as Atul Gawande suggested in his book Being Mortal: They don’t care about expanding networks but tightening existing ones. Most networking takes years to pay dividends while friendships pay them immediately (93). With a short time horizon there is only one obvious choice.
As my prognosis improved further, I began to want to do even more and found the motivation that, among other things, had led me to my current occupation. I wanted to get back to work. I needed to produce something to prove I was still capable and useful. What I do not know, is whether or not I would have gained back my ambition with some more time had I not had the luxury of a good prognosis to push me along. I certainly would like to think so. But what I am certain of is that it would have required immense mental strength to push myself away from staring at death.
Eric Greitens, a retired Navy Seal, once said in response to a question on whether or not he ever thought of dying in combat, that death is like the sun — while it’s always there, he didn’t stare at it. This stuck with me. If you stare at death, or even fear for that matter — just like the sun, it hurts and can blind you. Cognizantly reorienting towards something else, towards some sort of meaning, is not naivety or ignorance to its existence, but instead a difficult and consciously-planned action requiring immense strength. This is not to say that the sun isn’t there. You know it’s still shining. Like Cus D’Amato once said, both the hero and the coward are the same.
“They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward.”
I finally understood that physical strength is only just one manifestation of mental strength. I have no doubt Michael Phelps is mentally strong as is my colleague who wakes up every morning to go to the gym prior to a 13 hour work day. And it shows. But when I think of strong now I don’t just think of them. I see an image of a skinny teenager on a bed getting chemo who still wrote music. I see my friend who lost his mother growing up yet stayed engaged at school. My heart always sank with stories like these. I always was impressed. But strength wasn’t the word I thought of. It was more…pity. Conscious mental reorientation, or mental strength, doesn’t always mean a big bicep and therefore can be hard to see. I often confused what looked like someone on cruise control when they were in fact peddling hard.
The implication of this is the certainty that I have missed strength around me and have thought or acted with an assumption of weakness about others who fought silently through tragedy. I learned of people who fought much greater battles than mine that I didn’t have the slightest clue about before I was sick. Everyone has experienced suffering. By not knowing specifics about a stranger’s circumstances, but by acknowledging this universal truth, we have no choice but to start any relationship with some level of universal empathy. We don’t know their specific pain, but we know they have had pain (as we have). While specific or particular empathy directed towards one person can be both wonderfully intimate but also woefully distracting, this type is directed towards everyone and is synonymous with compassion. It is not only always innocuous, but most of the time, simply delightful.
I cannot think of any good reason not to have a predisposition of baseline compassion towards everyone.
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I turn on the news and see another college shooting; this time in Oregon. I’m saddened because it happened for nothing. I’m embarrassed and ashamed because my life won’t change from this but had it happened at Colgate it most certainly would have — which doesn’t make much sense. I’m angry at Congress for not passing a law mandating more background checks. I’m pissed that there is so much money in politics and that democracy has been sold to such an extent that few voices are actually heard in the conversation. And I want to hate somebody for something.
And so, in moments like these, I find myself torn between being a life loving, compassionate and peaceful cancer survivor and a regular and healthy 23 year old who gets angry at the world and who is still young and naive enough to believe he can and will play a role in changing it. While some of my professional ambitions have been tempered by a change in priorities in my life, I still feel frustrated, impatient and fiery enough to want to fight for something. But where to start? I could quit my job and join the Army. I could get more involved in political conversations and campaigns. I could start raising money and giving it to all sorts of neat things. Right now though, these possibilities and everything else that seems like it has a chance at making a substantial impact look like potential distractions from focusing on my top priorities: health, family, friends, and a job I enjoy. I built myself a cage.
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My angst builds as I sit here and do nothing. My desires are at odds. My anger grows away from my newfound compassion. I’m uncomfortable. I’m not quitting my job. I’m taking no health risks. I’m not missing any chance to spend time with my friends and family. But the more I reflect on the terror of ISIS or the senselessness of a school shooting, the more I am drawn to hate and the more I feel like I plugged all ways to vent in the name of my health. I’m drifting helplessly away from the person I wanted to be: with neither peace nor a fruitful fight.
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During my freshmen year of college I remember discussing the influx of certain immigrants into the Netherlands. Noting the Dutch penchant for tolerance, one of my favorite professor’s posed the question, “Should the incredibly tolerant society tolerate the influx of what is traditionally a more restrictive and intolerant society and thus turn more intolerant, or should they just turn more intolerant as to not tolerate this new intolerance thus somehow (but not really) preserving their tolerance?”
If tolerance and intolerance are substituted by love and hate in this real life tongue twister, it becomes, “Should the loving society love the influx of the hateful one and thus turn more hateful or should they turn more hateful as to not love, but hate the hate somehow preserving their loving nature?”
Or put another way, “Can hate kill hate?”
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Thinking I can do nothing is short lived. I realized we once again fall victim to the laws of nature and contrast: governed by a universal truth echoed by Martin Luther King in verse:
“Darkness cannot drive out dark:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
The only way to see how destructive hate it and to vanquish it; is with love; is with compassion; is with a universal empathy born from knowing we all have been hurt, anxious, broken, and lost on our way. I will never love the Oregon shooter. But maybe we can prevent others from following suit by flooding them with light. I found the compassion to try. We all can find the compassion to try. Acting with more of the same hate, and we surrender, blind, to the dark.
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