Perspective

Thinking Out Loud's been a bit quiet this last week. It's not as if there wasn't much to think about, or enough time to write about them -- I only worked Wednesday and Thursday this week but I was a weird emotional distance from the Boston Marathon Bombing. Fortunately, I wasn't close enough to have the traumatic emotional response that many have; I was three years removed from that. Nor was I far enough away to be completely insulated from what transpired -- I don't think anybody was.

Instead in the initial hours and days after the bombing, I seemed to occupy an emotional middle ground. I vividly remember 9/11 and how I felt then and this event was closer to me than that; yet I still felt slightly detached from the rawness that many people felt.

I was talking (and emailing) with a couple of card carrying members of the Cancer Club about this, and the sense of guilt that accompanied that partial detachment. It's not that any of us viewed the events with apathy or anything close to it, but the same cancer cocoon that protects us from too much negative information coming in, perhaps prevents too much emotion from spilling out, even in the most traumatic non-cancer events. It's as if there are two worlds -- our cancer world and the other world, and that other world is sometimes viewed through a haze from our world looking out.

On Saturday, I thought it right
 to wear my Dana-Farber
Marathon Challenge gear from
2010.  Not only Boston Strong
but also Dana-Farber Strong.

And then I went for a long run today.

I've been running a lot this week, in fact -- today was my 7th run in 9 days and the first time I've tackled my favorite 6-mile loop in probably 3 years. As I settled into my pace after the first mile, my mind settled down too, and I thought of how many of the victims of the attack were runners (either marathoners or casual runners), and how many months, or years, it might be before they can throw on a pair of running shoes and go out for a run on a beautiful spring day.

And I thought about an acquaintance of mine who contracted Lyme Disease and can no longer work.

And I thought of all the cancer patients who were recovering from surgery, or undergoing chemo, or stem cell transplants, or radiation, or all of the above.

A bit of the scenery on my favorite in-town run.
Photo by Mary Motte, from the Barrington
Virtual Art Gallery

Cancer comes with an ample amount of guilt, served up in many flavors. From guilt that what you did somehow caused your cancer to karmic guilt that wonders what you did to amass such dark karma, to guilt that your cancer is "easy" compared to other cancer patients to the more predictable guilt over being a burden to friends and families.

It's one of the perverse ironies about the mind that at a time when we should be most open to receiving, we often feel guilty about doing just that.

But guilt comes not only in flavors, but also in depths. Sometimes you can peel away those layers of guilt, and when you do, you're left at your emotional core...  with perspective.

--Michael

p.s. Adding a link about my fellow DFMC runners, http://www.necn.com/04/18/13/Runners-gather-in-Bostons-Back-Bay/landing.html?blockID=838291

If It Weren't For Cancer . . .

This post was going to start like this: Oh for god's sake, not another post about running. I formulated some ideas for this post as I was out enjoying a beautiful spring run on a day off. Then before I even made it inside my house, Stacy told me the news from Boston.

I don't know what I can add to the discussion that will consume us. There will be grief, sadness, anger, frustration. There will be relief, joy, appreciation and gratitude. Many will feel some of those emotions. Some will feel all of them. It seems a natural human reaction to tragedy to gauge our proximity to the event. We measure the degrees that separate us from disaster.

Three years ago, when cancer was something I witnessed and not experienced, I finished my Boston Marathon in an official time of 4:11. The first explosion went off at between 4:09 and 4:10 and the second one shortly thereafter. But for three years, I would have been running down Boylston Street in smoke.

I had though of volunteering for this year's race -- to thank all the Dana-Farber runners for their dedication and fundraising. I was going to ask to be at the finish line to help escort runners from the finish line back to the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge headquarters. In the end, my boys are off this week and I wanted to spend some time with them... and not have to deal with the crazy traffic that usually ensues on Marathon Day. So instead of volunteering, or even working today, I took a vacation day and spent it suburban Rhode Island.

Crazy indeed.

Friends and family who know the Dana-Farber connection to the Marathon (and my connection to running and Dana-Farber) have reached out to me and Stacy to make sure I'm okay. When one found out I was fine, she commented, "You must have a guardian angel watching over you."
"Yes," we replied. "It's called cancer."

If it weren't for cancer -- for six months of chemo, would I have been running the marathon today? If it weren't for cancer, would I have turned a milestone birthday (50, last December) into a reason to run? I've done that before. If it weren't for cancer, would I have been as concerned about taking time off to drive my kids to soccer camps and dentist appointments and ice cream shops on their school vacation week.

Who knows? It's likely that my knees and my wish to remain married would have kept me from another marathon. But it's hard to think of what decisions I would have made if I didn't have cancer. It's hard to think of how I even thought before I had cancer. And, in some respects, it's pointless to try.

There are thousands of decisions over the course of my life that took me to Dana-Farber five years ago. And who knows whether any decisions I made in my life had any affect on my developing cancer. It's likely.

I'd like to think that there is some kind of positive life force -- karma, God, human conscience, whatever -- that balances things out. But at times like this, it's hard to see how things balance out. It's hard not to think that it -- all of it -- is anything but serendipity. A string of connecting decisions that map out our fate from day to day, from year to year, from cancer diagnosis to safety.