Sunday June 5, 2022
Here’s a newsflash from my local lung cancer group: Setting goals is a really important part of living with lung cancer. Not just short-term or even medium-term goals. The long-range suckers, the kind all the business consultants (and educators) tell you should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. The educator in me pumps her fist in the air and shouts, right on! But I’m resistant– it feels a little too much like a straitjacket. This (obviously) makes it hard for me to dive in.
You have to take first things first, everybody agrees. You have to take care of the details related to The Big D (and that is not the D that’s a treatment side effect): estate planning, wills, decisions, i.e., how to deal with your online presence, passwords, etc. Then you forget about that and focus on living.
Short-range goals? I’m good: bike riding and fitness for the Big Ride to Multnomah Falls. Medium-range: being ready for our October trip to Zion and Bryce National Parks. Beyond that is the Territory of the Unknown. Kind of like the way the map of the US looked to Lewis and Clark before they set off to discover the new world, or whatever Thomas Jefferson wanted them to do*. (Can you tell I just spent time at the museum on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation?) But I’ve had trouble with the idea of long-range goal setting and living with lung cancer.
What’s the problem, you may be wondering. (I know I have.) Here’s what I’ve learned, in no particular order. May I point out, these learnings have been hard won. Some are brand new, some are insights I am far from acting upon. (Learning to live with cancer is stupid hard sometimes.)
- I have to disconnect the idea of goal setting from our societal obsession with achievement. And, yes, my whole life– to this point, at least– I’ve swallowed the Kool Aid about Being the Best. Isn’t that a cornerstone of American society? Work hard, to the best of your ability, and good things will follow. In cancerland, you can be a model patient and still get clobbered. (Surprise! Here’s a little brain met**!)
- Long-range goal setting has to happen within the parameters of personal beliefs; sometimes these diverge wildly from the norm(s) of your tribe. Me, I’m pretty sure lung cancer is going to get me before I am ready to be gotten. Why? There’s no cure, and as I’ve observed, lung cancer is sneaky, relentless, and able to mutate to escape treatments that have worked for a while, sometimes a long while. Yep, I believe lung cancer always wins. Am I going to disclose this belief to my tribe? Hell no. Once I said it to Dr. Lungs and he visibly recoiled. Don’t say that, he exclaimed. After all, I was being treated with curative intent. (What, did he think I would jinx myself?) My people talk matter-of-factly about their brushes with the big D, but not about their beliefs around it. At the same time, people are unfailingly and unflinchingly supportive of whatever decisions a tribe member makes, whether it’s to discontinue active treatment and enter hospice, seek alternative treatment paths, etc. After a death, the deceased is spoken of fondly and matter-of-factly. It goes without saying: lung cancer sucks and they didn’t deserve it.
- Somewhere along the way, you meet up in a dark alley with your feelings about death. You wrestle for a long time. (This is one time when it’s OK to bring a knife.) When you walk away, you know a few things. Me? I’m no longer afraid of death. I am, however, damned curious about it. I don’t find comfort in religious discussion of an afterlife, but I am fierce in my belief that a great and gentle force, known to many (me included) as God, will hold me up and strengthen me to dwell in the truth of my situation, no matter what that might be.
So, in the context of these things, here is my solitary long-term goal.
I want to live, fully, richly, joyfully.
That’s it.
Sure, in order to accomplish this, there’s stuff I have to do: exercise & lose weight, for two. (Read why here.) Develop spiritually. Do things I love that bring joy. But there’s stuff I have to be as well. Kind, joyful, useful. Most challenging, for me, is to learn to value myself and my life in ways unrelated to achievement or “excellence” (Put this in the “Holy crap, are you kidding?” category).
This is not an impressive list. There’s no mention of replacing Sheryl Sandberg at Meta, for example. No talk of a job or a significant career presence– in fact, no mention of work at all. But it does acknowledge that in the event I am unable to ride a bike in a year or three, I’d better get on it now. That hiking and time in nature are spiritually vital to me. That I may not be able to risk volunteering face-to-face, in physical settings, but I can bake birthday cakes for kids who may never had had one before. And, in the event that cancer runs me over sooner rather than later, that this list of stuff is enough to make a meaningful life. (I’m looking at you, category “are you kidding?”.) (Fully embracing this idea may do me in before cancer does.)
This is all stuff you probably know, but it’s mind-blowing for me. And it may be only the beginning of this thought process.
So, thanks for reading. I hope you find a pocket of joy today.
*Jefferson’s exact instructions: “The point of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregan [sic], Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce.” Mapping the territories, engaging with the Native peoples to develop trade and political alliances; learning about the flora and fauna, all became part of the journey.
**Met: short for metastasis, or, the spread of a cancer beyond its original location in the body
————————————-
Images
- Red boat by Pat Zumhagen
- Egg & Hammer by Steve Buissinne
- Together by Gerd Altmann
- Dagger by Josef Juchem
- Map https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYQgBhZXgAIbWxZ.jpg
- Pocket joy by Joanna Reichert
