Living with "The Big C's"

In the cancer universe of patients and their families, friends and doctors, "The Big C" is a commonly used and fitting reference. Cancer is big. Cancer is everywhere. Cancer is the unwanted visitor, the renter that won't leave, the stranger that takes over your life. If life is a poker game, cancer holds all the cards. Cancer is never far from our minds. We might even begin to think that at the slightest lump or hacking cough, "this is it, it's all over with." Simply put, cancer freaks people out.

I know this from personal experience. I get freaked out because my father, brother and uncles all died of cancer. My mother is a cancer survivor. Cancer brings out the best and the worst in us. It can turn family and friends against each other just as easily as it can bring them together. Cancer can turn a positive, happy person into a cynical, depressed, angry wreck. I know this. I was that happy positive person who is now a cynical, depressed angry wreck. I'm not always this way, but in the darkest of times I have had my moments.

In Buddhism, we also have something called "the Big C." It is Compassion. In our practice, compassion is the foundation and the starting point. In my mind it very simply comes down to this: because we are granted just one more breath, one more moment, one more day, we share our gratitude by being compassionate to everything and everyone in our lives. It sounds so simple, and yet it is so easy to lose our focus on just breathing and being, breathing and being.

While there is no cure for "the Big C," cancer, awareness of the other "Big C," compassion, in the sense of understanding the impermanence of life, the coming and going of illness and suffering, the rise and fall of joy and happiness, can be incredibly helpful when dealing with any life-threatening illness. In my life, this is all a work in progress. I'm still learning to forgive myself for not doing more to help my father and my brother.