“Whenever anything happens within our awareness, our mind assigns it a meaning.”
~Jeremy Geffen, M.D.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of his mind.” ~ William James
“Why me?” I ask myself. Not directly and almost not consciously. I pass someone with a cigarette dangling from her hands and wonder “Why me?” I sit at gatherings of people, look around, and as I realize I am the only bald head, I wonder “Why me?” I look at others who are seemingly very happy with life, and wonder “Why me?” I quickly sweep this question to the back of my mind. It seems like a dangerous place to go with no answers. However, if we as human beings assign meanings to whatever happens in our consciousness, then we need to explore what comes up in our minds. So, please, dear reader, bear with me as I explore the meaning of “cancer” in my life today.
My first response to the meaning of cancer is that it is something that “happened” to me. I am a passive recipient of these genes gone mad in my body. I am not really sure how this happened and not really sure that it matters. Did I smoke? No. Was I exposed to some dangerous environmental toxins? Not that I am aware of. Is it a matter of heredity? I am not sure but doubt it. So how did it happen?
According to a special talk on the Charlie Rose Show addressing advancements of science and cancer, our bodies for many reasons (environment, food intake, heredity) produce many cells that have gone mad and our immune systems take care of them. Cancer develops when our body does not, cannot fight those particular cells on its own and the cells grow forming, in my case, a breast tumor. I haven’t asked my doctor about how this happened to me but I am assuming that he can’t really answer that either.
The other part of this question is, however, was I a passive actor in this? This begins the “if only” questions. If only, I had been better at eating the right things, green vegetables, anti-oxidants, drank less wine, less coffee, etc. If only, I had exercised more. Research does indicate that these factors decrease the risks of cancer. So maybe, a change in my behavior could have assisted my body in resisting these cancer cells. Hindsight is 20-20!
Last week, when I was holding little Elle, my grandbaby, in my arms, I thought of these questions. I felt guilty and responsible for my situation — for my cancer. I thought about how cancer is limiting the time I am able to spend with her today and perhaps will in the future. I felt sad, angry, and powerless.
Wayne Dyer suggests, “Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you growing. You get to choose.”
Flashback: I am sitting on a small in hill in Golden, Colorado. I am in my mid-twenties with two children and on the verge of a divorce. I went to Colorado to start a new life with my husband and children. He had a new career with a restaurant chain; we were to have a new start. But that never happened. Everything fell apart.
I loved Colorado. I had dreamed of living there when I was a child and had seen those beautiful Rockies in a ski magazine. I loved the clear blue sky and the golden Aspen trees. I gazed at the mountains every morning over coffee, every afternoon while watching the children play and in the evening from the deck of our apartment. I felt free and alive.
I wish I knew when things started to go wrong but today I cannot quite put all the pieces together. Perhaps all the pieces to that puzzle are not in my memory. Erased or never in my awareness. But all of that doesn’t matter in this writing. What matters is the idea of change.
I knew I had to make a drastic change. I needed to come back to New York. A friend was selling his old Chevy truck, I was going to put our stuff in the back, pack the kids beside me and drive across the country. I wasn’t quite brave enough, so I borrowed money from friends, packed what I could in some suitcases, and flew to New York – just the boys and me.
Before I made that I decision, I sat on the hillside with Tommy Hancock. He was the leader of the Supernatural Family Band, a family of blues musicians who adopted me as one of the family. Tommy was a guru, with a long white ponytail and a heart-full of wisdom. He told me that it was not the decision that mattered in the long run but what we do with our lives after the decision. “You see, Bonnie, change happens every moment. It is the only constant. What we do with change is what matters.”
I left Colorado the next week. I cried for a long time. I longed for the mountains, the clear air, and the beautiful blue of the sky. Most of all I longed for the feelings of freedom and a happiness that I have never found in the same way again. In New York, it rained for 30 days straight. But then it stopped—my crying and the rain. I picked up my life and went on. I remembered Tommy’s words – its what we do with change that matters.
So I made a new life. I got a job and an apartment. I invited the kids’ dad back to join in our new life. We made it work for another five years.
That is the meaning – making life. Making life out of what happens to us each day like a potter with clay. Each day we work on a sculpture that we call our life. Each day we enter the studio and unveil the work that we left the night before. Our histories are in the clay and image we find in the early morning when we awake. We cannot totally start a new. But we can add new curves and edges, we add more clay and take some away. We can add found objects and the pigments of paint. Some nights we are tired and leave the clay uncovered, only to awake and find the edges dry and brittle. Other nights we are careful and cover the clay with soft moist cloths. Each day we awake to what we left the night before and mold the clay into something, if not new, then something more, something different in some small way.
Each sculpture I have made goes through a transformation from the first handfuls of clay to when I decide I am finished. This usually takes weeks at a time. One time, when I was on a Buddhist retreat I sculpted an old man who ended up after days of meditation to be a feisty teenage boy. Another time I sculpted a beautiful young women with her head back, hair flowing, and with one short move of my thumb closed her mouth in order to keep the secrets of her childhood.
Angelo, a man of great wisdom, an artist friend, told me that there are no mistakes in art. That art is a motion, a movement like a dance. A good artist incorporates the motion, the mistakes, and you can see it in the painting or the sculpture – it is alive.
So sometimes, in life, there are mistakes, there are challenges, there is dry clay and moist. There are moments when we forget to cover the clay and need to make adjustments the next day. There are also moments when the clay is moist and molds easily in our hands. Each day we have the opportunity to mold the clay we are given. And if we can let go of the end result, the end image, and stay in the moment, being mindful of our hands on the clay, the pressure our fingers make, incorporating all that happens, each day we are creating the meaning that is our life.
Letters 