But now that I am approaching the dreaded age of 90, full of Kierkegaardian fear and trembling, I have to admit it’s still boring, but in a very different way. This essay will attempt to explain just how.
At this stage in my alleged life, I find myself seemingly stuck in what appears to be an interminable bardo - somewhere after my life is over but before it has actually been allowed to expire. I have joked for years that God being the Supreme Ironist has seen fit to keep me in an arrested state of mortality. Imagine – I have devoted my professional life to the study of near-death experiences, and yet I seem to lack the ability to croak. So, I remain, still here, still waiting to die, like a prisoner languishing in a cell (i.e., my body) while serving an indefinite sentence.
So, yes, waiting to die is still boring, but frustrating! What does one have to do to leave this world, especially now that we are all suffering the indignity of having to live in the era of Trump’s seemingly forever reign? It’s enough to send a person back to ponder the mysteries of theodicy.
It makes me think that perhaps the Gnostics were right, that this world is actually being governed by a demiurge, a kind of cosmic abortion, a false creator of a fallen world.
Of course, I am jesting, I don’t really think I am being punished for my sins. I just think I am incompetent when it comes to dying.
My spiritually-oriented friends tell me that if I am still here, I must not have completed my work or the raison d’être for my life. To which I say, balderdash! Just another New Age bromide, if you ask me.
Recently, a dear friend suggested that I should write something along the lines of “how to live.” Surely, she said, you’ve lived long enough now to have acquired some wisdom about life that you could impart to others. “Pshaw,” I protested. I don’t have enough self-delusion to think I have any special wisdom to share about how to live. Besides, I have always rejected any notion of being a kind of “spiritual teacher.” I’m a researcher, not a self-help expert or guru. I may be a jerk, but far be it for me to offer any advice to others about how they should live their lives when I can’t even figure out how to live mine.
Still, pondering what my friend had suggested, it did occur to me that I could still write something that at least my friends might find worth reading. And so, with his long prologue now drawing to a close, let me finally start in.
Living with Cancer
I have a friend named Jim who lives in the mountains of Colorado. I call him “a friend” though we have never met and until recently I had very little direct contact with him. Most of what I had previously learned about Jim was told to me by my daughter, Kathryn, who is Jim’s next-door neighbor. Kathryn has a deep friendship with Jim.
Jim, who is 73, was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer seven years ago. It is inoperable.
In dealing with it, he has had to contend with many painful tests and treatment regimens, some of which make him “radioactive” and requires him to be isolated until the treatment runs its course. Of course, he has had to deal with chemo as well. He now suffers from anemia, too, and is often very tired.
Kathryn has told me a lot about Jim’s life, as it is now and as it was before he got sick. She has also told me that Jim has a been a regular reader of my blogs and apparently has read a number of the books I’ve written about in my blogs over the past several years.
Well before Jim became ill, he ran an IT company for about twenty years, and made enough money that he could retire in 1997, a wealthy man. He was so successful that he was elected into a kind of IT Hall of Fame.
But Jim loves the rural life. Before he became ill, he was a dedicated hiker. He also fostered old dogs for many years. Jim has been married for over fifty years to a woman named Kathy, who he has recently told me, is “the love of his life.” But they don’t live together because Kathy loves living in Denver while Jim loves living where the wild elk roam. But Kathy visits him often and continues to take good care of him. Here’s a recent photo of Jim and Kathy.
Recently, Kathryn told me that Jim had been doing some writing on what he’s learned from living with cancer, and that what he had written really impressed her. She felt that Jim had acquired considerable wisdom based on what his cancer had taught him.
For some time, I had admired Jim from afar, but had never taken the trouble to tell him how I felt about him. So, the other night, I sent him an e-mail with the subject head, “You’re My Hero.”
Here’s what I wrote to Jim:
Dear Jim,
No, really, you are. Kath has kept me informed - in great mesmerizing and painful detail - of all the multitudinous things from which you suffer and the various soul-crushing treatments you have had to endure, including those radioactive ordeals, in order to treat your cancer and keep it at bay as much as possible.
But what has amazed me and filled me with admiration for your spirit are all things you have been able to take pleasure in despite how crappy and tired you feel most of the time. Watching your beloved elk, reading, writing out your thoughts, enjoying the company of your dog Hannah, etc. Making sure you take the time to enjoy life as much as possible as long as you can. How many people, having to deal with what you do, would be able to do likewise? Damn few, if you ask me, which I’ve noticed you haven’t.
So I have an idea. When you’re not too tired (I know you are now because of your anemia), I think I would be great if you wrote something about how to live while living with serious cancer. From what Kathryn has told me, you have a lot of wisdom and living with cancer has taught you a lot. How about sharing what you have learned with a wider audience? You might be able to help others cope with serious illness by writing about how you have dealt with yours with such courage, grace and wisdom.
I often think of you, Jim, especially at night when I go to bed, and I send you continued best wishes for your life during this difficult stage of your journey.
*************
Jim responded warmly to my letter and then offered to share some of his writing with me. He also gave me his permission to share his wisdom with you. What follows is what Jim feels he has learned from living with cancer.
Born Dying – Master
I never liked the war metaphors. People talk about “fighting” cancer, as if it’s a battle you can win if you just swing hard enough. That’s bullshit. Cancer isn’t something outside me - it’s in me, part of me, tangled in my biology. I don’t battle it. I live with it. And living with it has taught me things I never expected.
Empathy
Sickness stripped away the old illusions - merit, control, toughness, being smarter or stronger than the next guy. Those stories crumble quick when you’re counting out pills or watching your body change. What’s left is empathy. You see fragility everywhere, in yourself and in everyone else. Instead of judgment, you start to feel for people. You realize everyone’s stumbling with the cards they’ve been dealt.
I spent years being critical, impatient, wanting things sharper, cleaner, better. Illness softened some of that edge. I still cut through the bullshit, but I understand now that most of us are just trying, and trying itself matters.
Gratitude
Not the Hallmark kind. The raw kind. The kind that sneaks up on you in the morning when you realize you woke up again. Gratitude for Kathy, who stays through the mess. For friends who drive an hour just to sit with me. For Hannah’s head resting heavy on my lap. For the five-mile walk I can still take, even if it leaves me tired.
Gratitude is the anchor. It makes the ordinary matter: coffee, sunlight on the cabin deck, a neighbor plowing the driveway without being asked. Ordinary is everything when you know your time is shrinking.
And here’s the truth: if you have gratitude, you pretty much have enough. That’s the connection. Enough isn’t about money or possessions. It’s about being able to see what’s right in front of you and know it matters. Gratitude and enough are the same thing said in two different ways.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Cancer has taken everything: sex, wine, food, hiking, my dog fostering, driving, and energy. I’m still grateful for what it hasn’t taken yet - my ability to feel all the things that allow me to live with cancer. When that’s gone, then it’s time for the morphine drip to go full throttle.
Knowing Myself
Here’s the truth: I had to get to know myself - who I was, and why I was who I was, mistakes and all. That was the hardest work of all, harder than cancer itself. But doing that work made the rest possible. It let me face the illness in a way a lot of people can’t. Without that kind of self-examination, the fear and the anger would have eaten me alive.
Rolling With the Punches
When I was a kid, my father showed me a little about boxing. Not how to hit harder - I was smaller and weaker than the other kids - but how to slip a punch, how to roll with it so it didn’t flatten you. That lesson stuck. I didn’t know it then, but it was practice for this. Cancer throws punches you can’t block. You don’t win by swinging back harder. You survive by rolling with it, by bending without breaking. That early lesson has carried me farther than any idea of “fighting” the disease.
Presence
Illness is the great equalizer. It forces presence. You can’t pretend forever stretches out ahead of you, so you stop living as if it does. You stop chasing, stop measuring, stop comparing. You start noticing. You live in hours, sometimes in minutes, and that’s enough.
Presence isn’t a trick of meditation apps. It’s clarity born of necessity. It’s knowing that the small moment you’re in is the only one you’ll ever really own.
Living Every Two Years
You can’t live day-to-day. If you did, you’d be a sociopath, because day-to-day living is just survival with no horizon. What works for me is waking up each morning and assuming I have two years left. That’s long enough to matter, short enough to stay real. And when the time comes, I’ll adjust it to one year, or less if that’s what it is. That posture makes the days livable without falling into either denial or despair.
No Regrets, Just Understanding
People like to talk about regrets at the end. I don’t buy it. If you really look back, you know why things happened the way they did. You see the forces in play. Instead of regret, you get understanding.
That’s been my way through. I was wrong most of my life - about success, about control, about myself. If I was always wrong then, I’d be a fool to think I’m not wrong now. But that’s the point: understanding grows out of wrongness. Regret doesn’t help you. Examination does.
Born Dying
So here’s where I land: cancer is not a war. It’s not courage or weakness. It’s biology doing what biology does. But inside that, there’s still room for choice - not in the outcome, but in the posture you take toward it.
My posture is simple: empathy, gratitude, presence. That’s what makes living with cancer possible. It doesn’t erase the pain or the fatigue or the fear. It just keeps me human inside it.
We are all born dying. I just happen to know it more clearly than most. And maybe that’s enough.
