I’ve got to tell you, I hate it when people feel sorry for me. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate a bit of empathy for what I am going through, but I can thoroughly do without the pity. I don’t need it and I certainly don’t want it. There is no “poor me” going on here, I don’t feel bad about my situation or somehow maligned by the universe. That just isn’t me. Maybe it’s because I’m something of a secular humanist at heart, but I find strength in knowing that I can get through whatever I need to and too much sympathy dumped in my path just makes it that much slower for me to move along.

When I first tell people that I have cancer, there are several categories of reaction. There is the matter-of-fact “how are you holding up” response which, frankly, I can respect. It is an acknowledgement that this is a tough diagnosis for most people and a friendly way to check in. It isn’t melodramatic and it isn’t maudlin. There is my personal favorite, a completely unsentimental response tinged with humor, that I rarely get. There is an awkward silence followed by an awkward reply and a quick retreat which, while I understand it, is always kind of sad for me. And there is the gushing of sympathy followed by wet eyes and a look of doom in the observer that lets me know immediately that he or she is saying goodbye. That’s tough; it is a gloomy negative reaction and one that rests often in the observer’s own fears and frequently in a profound misunderstanding of current science and medicine. More than the cancer itself, these responses wear me down.

As humans, we are connected to one another in a very specific social manner. The energy that we impart to one another has the power to linger, not in a metaphysical sense so much as in an emotional and psychological one. The effect can be quite powerful, changing our mood for extended periods, and thereby effecting our own physical well-being. As individuals, we have to learn how to protect ourselves without shutting out emotional connections. So parsing this negativity and changing the narrative becomes essential.

As someone who is living with cancer, and as someone who is intent on being healthy and living well while travelling on this journey, altering the discussion has become essential to keeping my personal car on the road. The Cancer Narrative has historically been quite bleak for most people. There is no denying that, and for good reason. For over 3,000 years, cancer has been a terminal illness for many, if not most of the people whose cells began the abnormal mutations. Yet, in the past 30 years, modern science and Western Medicine have downgraded this condition to something of a chronic disease, one which has actionable plans and which can be managed for long lives.

This is a really good thing. It is the best time in history to have cancer, if cancer is something that you are going to have to live with. And because of this, it becomes possible to embrace the future, and the present as well, as a means of travel forward. Pity only slows the train.