The Capacity for Joy

I was going to write about fear and guilt but I'll get back to that topic in a later post. Instead I want to talk about the flip side of that coin:  joy. 

One of the things that cancer -- or any serious disease -- threatens to steal is not just happiness, but the capacity for joy. Mired in the day-to-day struggle of symptom or side-effect management, the disease becomes not just the oft-cited "new normal" but it becomes the new routine. Instead of a daily dose of happiness, we look for a serving of "am I okay today?" 

At best, our answer is yes. At worst, it's answered by uncertainty, ambiguity, and a day of obsession (or worse, Internet searches.)

In the process, the constant thinking about the question adds layers of clouds to your emotional weather that become harder to penetrate.The little things that once gave us joy can't make it through and even the larger bursts of sunshine are muted by the time they reach us.

That's the danger. But it doesn't have to be the reality. While the events that occupy our days and lives help shape how we feel, it's often true that the emotion you find is the one you're looking for. Looking for an argument? I'm sure you'll find one in pretty short order. Want to get mad? Good bet, you'll be able to find something in your day to sate that appetite for anger. 

I often look back at moments in my day and wonder why I deprived myself of joy. Was that offense really so egregious? Where was the harm? Why instead of laughing it off, did I pile on another layer? 

If you want moments of happiness to visit, then you have to have the capacity for joy. You have to be able to put aside the worries and obsessions, and decide that you're going to receive the joy that surrounds you. It becomes self-fulfilling - clouds beget more clouds; sunshine produces more sunshine.

* * * * *

There's a great little article that's circulating around social media and blogs from the LA Times. It's somewhat on topic here, but probably more related to item # 6 in my list of 10 Things I've Learned, and the impact that cancer has on those near the center of the storm. A short, but well-worth it read.

  

Optimism

Most people would say Matthew keeps his feelings inside --unlike his brother whose emotional state is to open books what the Super Bowl is to football.

But that's not a true description of Matthew. He's actually far from stoic. When Matthew is happy or excited, it's pretty obvious. It's only when something's troubling him that he keeps it inside.

 Here's my theory.

 Matthew is an optimist. So when things are going well, there's no reason to hide what he's feeling -- it jibes with his overall outlook. But when things aren't going well, when your world outlook is sunny, but the world is giving you a skyful of dreary, what do you do? If you were to show that you're sad, upset, troubled -- that the world isn't as rosy and shiny as you like to make it out to be -- well, that just doesn't compute with your internal programming.  So you don't let on. You still project optimism, while internally you worry that the pessimists are right. You wage an internal battle of half-full versus half-empty. And if you're a powerful optimist, you can keep the pessimism at bay. But at times, the darkness is just overpowering and it escapes from the bottle it's been kept in.  (I'm trying hard to resist Star Wars metaphors here but they seem almost inevitable.)

Matthew, most people would agree, is a lot like me. And whether or not that's good for him is open for debate, but it's been helpful for me in dealing with my diagnosis. When I was first diagnosed, it was briefly overwhelming. Yes, it was a slow-growing lymphoma. Yes, it was treatable if not curable. Yes, I felt fine. But it escaped the bottle.

Briefly.

Then it got stuffed back in. With a relatively tight seal. I jumped at the good news of a potentially great new job close to home. I convinced myself that I might not even need to have treatment for many years. Maybe the somewhat ambiguous pathology was because it wasn't really cancer. (Never underestimate the power of the force.)

That's not going to happen. It is lymphoma. The enlarged lymph nodes haven't miraculously returned to normal (although my blood work has -- and I'm no longer anemic!) and a few nodes are slowly growing. It is going to need treatment sometime; if not in six months, then maybe a year, or 18 months. It's not going to be 18 years. But that's okay. I'm in great hands with Dr. LaCasce and with Dana-Farber. I won't go into the treatment options here, but there are many good ones, I'm told. And that's all I need to know right now.

In the last couple of weeks, Stacy and I have been talking a lot about how we share the news of my diagnosis. If you're reading this, then you know about it. But beyond a small circle of people who I see daily or weekly, I hadn't told many people. It's only in the last couple weeks, that I've started to tell my old high school friends, my college friends, my coaching friends, my old colleagues from Pohly where I worked for nearly 13 years... really anyone who will listen.

There are a lot of theories for this. Talking about talking about it helped. So did this great post from my colleague at Dana-Farber. But the biggest reason for the increased openness is that I've learned over the last six months how to have my bad news coexist not just with my optimism, but with my image of myself as an active, healthy person.

It's been a tough six months.Our cat of 17 years died; Matthew broke his elbow in such an unusual way that it's likely he'll never have full range of motion in his right arm; I was diagnosed with cancer; and I lost my job for the first time -- not just in my professional career, but in my life.

That's a lot of bad juju from Darth Vader's peeps.

But it doesn't change my outlook. It doesn't change me. I am an optimist.

--michael