Live Like You Were Dying

It is Thanksgiving week.  As an avid blogger, I had the token being thankful blog all sewn up in my head.  I would open with the celebration of the milestone of my 700th class at OTF this week, revel in that number, relate it to other 700 things, such as how 700 pennies may only be 7 dollars, but carrying them in a sack up the side of the hill was way more challenging.  Take on the small challenges first as they are bigger than you might thing, grateful for success....blah blah blah.  Yep, it was all woven with colorful metaphors and holiday cheer, I had it ready to roll in my own mind.  In fact, I essentially had it worked out by last Thursday, well ahead of schedule.

Until I didn't........

On Friday, someone close to me received a life altering diagnosis, and is facing a large, game changing surgery.  Somehow the glow of my 700 classes with the flowery words of being thankful for reaching goals one step at a time, no longer seemed to matter.  Those thoughts were replaced by trying to find a way to encourage someone through a situation for which they had no power.  Normally, my brand of motivation for my clients involves sharing my story.  My battles against a lifetime of obesity.  My discussion of the people on my journey who convinced me I could even when I was not so sure.  Convince them they can too.  I begin to slowly open the window of possibilities for my clients and then sit back and watch them bloom into these amazing forces.  It's what I do, and I love it.

However,  how does that apply here?  How do you convince someone they "can" through an illness that is totally out of their control?  They can what?  Control what happens in surgery?  Control the diagnosis? Control the course of the operation?  The fear producing lack of control is something my brand of motivation did not apply to.  After all, I motivate by proving things are within our control, when, in this situation, they are not.   I was clearly out of my element here.  Admittedly, my attempts to encourage were largely a failure this weekend.  I finally resigned myself to the place where I simply had to wait until the recovery phase of surgery to apply my special brand of encouragement.  Now, I was the one who had no control.

Anyone who knows me knows I am a planner.  I am the person with the plates spinning on the sticks, six or seven at a time frantically transitioning from plate to plate, never letting even one fall.  I balance two jobs working every shift there is, kids' schedules, running my company, household stuff, workouts, race training .....my endless list of stuff that occupies each and every day, so no,  my own lack of control is clearly not working here.  I am a get shit handled doer, not a waiter for the right opportunity to jump in.  As I was headed in for night shift this weekend, I found myself lost in thought, contemplating the frustration of this notion.

I was travelling the New York Thruway into Albany, my iPhone on random, when suddenly a song came on I had not heard in a very long time.  "I was in my early 40's, with a lot of life before me, when a moment came and stopped me on a dime...."  Tim McGraw.  OK there is a lot of irony here.  First, I am not a country music fan.  In fact, I generally say that country music gives me a pain behind my eye.  Sorry but the white chick from Chicago is really more of a rock fan.  Yet, it had a lot of relevance to my current situation.  Why was this even on my iTunes?  My understanding was this song was about a specific aggressive brain tumor I saw many times in my ten years of neurosurgery, the glioblastoma multiforme.  Untreated, patients are dead in three months, with chemo, radiation and surgery, you get 18.  When it came out, this song was something those of us in neurosugical circles could understand and appreciate from a professional perspective.  Somehow though, this weekend I heard this song with new ears.  It was no longer professional but personal.

Friday stopped me on a dime.  The weekend was spent going over and over test results and facing mortality and the ramifications of that, feeling helpless just like the song said.  However, the song reminded me of something very important that did not happen, at least until now.  Seeing this as an opportunity.  This is a positive opportunity to see what life has to offer. This was an opportunity to truly live like we are dying.  We could see a chance to break out of the routine and see exactly what can experienced right here and right now.  He talks about skydiving, ok side note to my Spartan Team, clearly if the A frame freaks me out this may not be for me...Rocky Mountain Climbing, ok this.  If I can climb the mountains of WV for 20 miles, taking on some snowy Rockies, yeah that would be amazing.  Then there was the notion of the mechanical bull....a whole other thing.  There seems to be so many opportunities in life we ignore because of our perceived notion of limitless time or our ideas that our own limits prevent us from these experiences.

As I fantasized about my own possibilities in life, I finally began to realize that maybe my job, in this scenario, was not to encourage this person through the situation for which nobody had any control, but instead, help them to embrace the best life has to offer right here and right now.  I now know this is really more what Thanksgiving is about this year.  A grateful heart that we have been given an amazing opportunity to live like we are dying each and every day, not 700 classes or whatever the latest PR is for the pull over.  For some. this notion will be the simple appreciation of a glorious sunrise over a beach with crashing waves, others an amazing dinner around a beautiful table with family and for others it will be jumping out of an airplane.  No matter what it is, through the trials of life we need to see that every day is an opportunity to see the best life has to offer.  The chance as Tim McGraw so eloquently puts it, to love deeper and speak sweeter.  It makes me think maybe, just maybe... I need to seek out a bull named Fumanchu.