Thanks Charm.... It is a magical world, a beautiful, and a horrible one at the same time. It's a ride with as many valley as peaks. I have often thought of William Blake's poem (I even have part of it as a caption under the Vietnam photo of me in Facebook) Tiger tiger.... it's the end that always gets me, after describing the fearfulness of the tiger. "Did He who made the lamb make thee" speaks to the dichotomy of life, and more than that our own nature. It all seems a delicate balance between the truly horrible, - wars, physical pain, cancer, famine, etc., and the days when you are blessed to really experience the joy of life itself. The beating of your own heart, the emotional rush of an unexpected, intensely profound moment that lasts only a second. We bounce between the extremes and exist somewhere in the middle, like a fragile dingy in a trough between two giant waves. At one moment we are at the crest of the swell in sun, and the next we are in the valley, the light blocked by the enormity of the water's walls on each side, worrying that it may crash upon us. A never ending cycle.
I have a friend, Ugo Panella, who is an Italian photographer. He travels the globe to conflict and war zones and more, but is recently finishing up a photo essay on cancer. Check this photo he just sent me as a gift, on the home page of his web site.
http://www.ugopanella.it/The story behind this photo is a microcosm of the dichotomy of it all. The father with with artificial limbs, embracing his daughter who he loves beyond all things, more than life it self. The daughter safe in her father's arms. The story behind this and the other images in the Sierra Leone links at the top of the page is staggering. The rebel armies that are populated with children soldiers, came to their village. The terror tactic that had been used there (with no intervention from the world for more than 2 years) was for them to not murder people, but to cut off their hands or arms if they refused to work the diamond fields as slave labor. The father refused, and the rebels forced his daughter at gunpoint to swing the machete that cut off his arms..... I have been staring at this photo for two months since he sent it to me, trying to get my mind around what these two individuals went through. What their life is like, what the depth of their love is. What they carry within themselves.
As cancer warriors we all go through some degree of hell. We become absorbed in what our own battle is, we have enormous empathy for our fellow travelers. When we emerge from it all we are different, physically, emotionally, certainly changed forever. If we get to live a month, a year, a decade, we savor things - if we have grown as individuals in our test of fire. There is a richness in our survivorship. I think your statement says it well. That we should venture forth into the magic of the time that we have been given fully, tempered for sure, but without reservation. Aware that the tiger lives in the forest we walk through. But certainly without a useless waste of thought, sweating the small stuff that will interfere with the richness of our next breath, and the experience of the miracle of it all.
Sorry to hi-jack the tread into this. But tonightI feel myself more introspective than normal. Much has happened to good people that I care about that seems to have little reason to it.
