When Cancer Calls into Question Everything You Thought You Knew
by Michael Eselun, BCC
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke
Most of us walk through our lives feeling so certain of what we hold to be true; then along comes a crisis – like cancer – and suddenly all bets are off. But I’m a good person, so God will heal me… God doesn’t give us any more than we can handle… Everything happens for a reason… A positive attitude is everything… Cultivating gratitude is the only way to experience peace… If you haven’t said such platitudes to yourself, you’ve undoubtedly heard them countless times from others. While these statements of faith may have seemed true at another time and place, right now, in these circumstances, they just fall flat.
Our certainty might even extend to what we have always believed about the people whom we thought would be there for us no matter what. I have found that so many folks living with cancer are surprised by who shows up and who doesn’t.
A deeper peace may be found in living the questions, rather than clinging to your old certainty.
As humans, we crave certainty. Security. We want to know, Why did this happen? Will I be OK? What if there are no answers and no certainty to be found? What if we can’t know? Does that mean peace of mind and heart are no longer possible?
Not necessarily. By letting go of what we thought we knew, we just might be able to open ourselves to finding love, support, meaning – and even magic – in the least likely of places. A deeper peace may be found in living the questions, rather than clinging to our old certainty. We can move forward with the curiosity of the explorer, charting new waters, making new discoveries about who we are and what we’re connected to, releasing our need for immediate answers.
We just came through the holiday season, in which there is such overwhelming cultural demand to feel a certain way – grateful, blessed, joyful. And when we can’t summon those feelings, we often intensify our suffering by judging ourselves harshly for it. But our feelings can’t always be ordered up on demand, and they don’t always coincide with the calendar. The beliefs that have seen you through life thus far, those about having a positive attitude and God not giving us more than we can handle, may not be big enough to include this new reality. You stand a better chance of accessing those feelings of gratitude or joy when you first acknowledge and accept how you are feeling right now. You don’t need to defend or explain your feelings to anyone, not even yourself.
Sometimes cancer can call into question how we see ourselves, who we are in the world. If I’ve always seen myself as a marathon runner, or the get-it-done mom who can handle a dozen tasks at once, and yet because of my cancer, I can’t do those things anymore … well then, who am I? This is just one more question to live.
Discovering who you are when you’re not all those things you did, or all those things you thought you were, can be a profound spiritual journey. Though, it may be scary at first. You may be afraid of discovering you are less than you thought. But what if you are more? And what if you are connected to more, with a far deeper capacity for love, kindness, and compassion – for others and for yourself? You may just discover a whole new understanding of what it means to love and be loved.
When a patient of mine, Angela, a 30-something mother of two, was diagnosed with breast cancer, she said this to me: “Michael, I have cancer. That’s the truth. But you know what? It’s only one truth of many truths.” Can her wisdom be enough for all those who walk this journey?
Can we each keep our eyes and hearts open to recognize other truths when the old ones just aren’t enough anymore? What if there is a deeper peace to be found in living the questions – to accepting ourselves, our lives, and our response to life as it is, moment-to-moment, unfixed, ever-evolving? Can we move forward with more fascination than fear, with more curiosity than certainty? Perhaps, then, we can all walk each other home “some distant day into the answer.”
Michael Eselun serves as chaplain for the Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology in Los Angeles, CA. He is a highly-regarded keynote speaker who speaks extensively to healthcare professionals, patient populations, and faith communities across the country. Widely published in journals, Michael also has presented a TEDx talk, “It’s Magic,” (available on YouTube) about finding the magic in life. Learn more at MichaelEselun.com.
This article was published in Coping® with Cancer magazine, January/February 2017.
