Nobody likes slogging through the shit. That’s pretty safe to say. But sometimes it must be done, whether we like it or not. If there are going to be hardships, we are told to look for a “Silver Lining,” as though our upside-down umbrella will magically fill with pennies. In the shit, those pennies might be damn near impossible to see.
Many people retreat as a first resort. Hide from the problems rather than face them. I would go so far as to suggest that such behavior is basic human nature: fight or flight syndrome, where running from danger is our first instinct — until we are cornered. The problem with health issues such as Cancer is that, whether one wants to admit it or not, the patient is ostensibly cornered before there is even a proper diagnosis. So any flight that may be attempted is not only in vain, it is illusionary. Being the ostrich may offer a temporary sense of calm to some people, but it also does nothing to help move through the difficulty and onward toward a better existence.
Self-help gurus and the proponents of countless “programs,” and also probably my mother at some point, have said that we grow through our challenges. In truth, it is the struggles in life both big and small that build what we call “character.” That nebulous term applies to the version of us that responds to adversity and reacts to our environment, both internal and external. We can look at our hearts and minds, dig into our sense of spirituality and find ways in which we connect to the world or universe around us. How we choose to interpret these things, what we do with our interpretations, where we decide to go as a result; this is the evolution of our “character.” And it is something that can be immensely fulfilling to the individual.
Even if the circumstances are dire.
This is because we are all spiritual beings. Even the most resolute atheist will recognize that there is something about our emotional and intellectual state that makes us feel connected to the “outside of us.” It has nothing to do with supernatural magic or divine beings, but everything to do with the nature of being human. We universally crave connections — hermits and misanthropes may eschew human contact, but there is still a very human drive to connect to something that may not always be tangible, yet the drive exists in everyone.
And slogging through the shit offers a rare opportunity to refocus on what that desired connection may be. But we cannot find it without embracing the bad stuff.
In fact, the bad stuff is really only there to help us. I don’t mean that the bad stuff has its own conscious objectives or is in any way purposeful on its own. The Cancer analogy that is so often used, that it is an aggressor that attacks the patient, misrepresents the reality that cancerous cells are mindlessly multiplying with no actual desire to kill their host. That does not alter the nasty truth that cancers are inherently awful, but it may help with the realization that, like any bad stuff we encounter in our lives (bursting real estate bubbles, tsunamis, viral infections or an onslaught of SPAM), we can deal with our problems and keep slogging along. Sometimes, we can even manage to march with our knees high enough to clear the quagmire of whatever has been layered there up over our shins, all the weighted rhetoric that has made us fearful, the red tape, all that makes us want to kick into flight mode, everything.
So here we are, Bearers of Bad News; we wait for you to tell us something to wake us up. Give us something good, to challenge who we think we are, to slap us around a little and see how well we rise to it. That’s right, give us something good: give us something bad. Because when it’s done, when that bad thing is served up and dished out, it does feel better. And if it is not over, the pain is never going away or the body cannot be saved, there is yet a measure of that connection, that human spirituality, which has the potential to carry us through the most devastating storm.
Even with a roll of the dice that appears to doom our fate, each of us can meet and greet our destiny with a generous and hearty handshake of gratitude.
What our lives amount to has much to do with what we learn along the way and how we apply our experiences. Ultimately, it is a personal measure, nothing more. When we are gone, our experience remains our experience. Good and happy things should make up as much of that experience as possible, certainly; but embracing it all is how we move most fully and richly through life.