Battle won, winnings shared – post-cancerous reflection
Dear friends:
Nobody knows how and when the enemy sneaked in. My allies discovered it and warned me about its presence after the histological examination of the tissues cut out of a sebaceous cell on November 18. The general of the allied forces, Surgeon Dr. Ronald E. Beresky, worked out a strategy at Dean Med Center-Stoughton Clinic, and brought up his big guns , i.e. his small and sharp scalpels, bistouries and lancets and attacked it frontally. After the battle he sent out his high tech reconnoitering units, the big CT and PET scanners, to make sure that the enemy is completely wiped out.
The time span between the „bad news” {’the pathologists found Merkel Cell Carcinoma cancer cells in your tissues’) and the good news (’neither the blood test, nor the chest x-ray, nor the CT and PET scans show any more cancerous cells in you body’) stretched over 34 days, in other words I had 34 days to think over everything, and especially my priorities.
Out came the “Cancer Patient’s Epicurean Time Management” which I shared with my friends in emails, in my blog;
http://stress-freedom.net/2010/12/cancer-patient%E2%80%99s-epicurean-time-management/
and on Facebook:
I have just re-read this posting with post-cancerous eyes and found nothing essential to be changed: the priorities stay as I defined them.
I am aware that just because I have got a bit of a reprieve, I should not think that I have turned a corner.
The other learnings of my reflections and musings are not new. In fact, they they were put down by Epicurus and his friend, Metrodorus, are 2300 years ago:
“It is possible to provide security against other things, but as far as death is concerned, we men all live in a city without walls.”
“We have been born once and cannot be born a second time; for all eternity we shall no longer exist. But you, although you are not in control of tomorrow, are postponing your happiness. Life is wasted by delaying, and each one of us dies without enjoying leisure.”
My dear friends, colleagues, wayfarers, trainers and coaches, trainees and coaches, fellow-mortals all: can you derive any benefit from the booty I made and shared for planning your own lives?
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a new kind of pain and a new variation of pleasure
Although the surface of my 3 incisions feel better, I started feeling a new kind of pain under the surface of the wound on my hip. It’s a deeper kind of ache, as if someone had kicked my gluteus maximus with a very heavy boot very viciously. Luckily we have painkillers so I took two of the lighter kind (Tylenol).
On the other hand my kids re-introduced the card game “uno” which can be played by all of us, whether only three are available or we manage to infect and persuade our guests to play with us, versus euchre, which strictly requires 4 players.
Playing cards, like every play, creates its own world, with its own rules, space and time. I vaguely remember some 30 years ago having read Johan Huizinga’s “Homo Ludens” proving this very fact we experience now daily.
Harmless plays simply add to own pleasure balance without hurting anybody. Well, most of them. The kids also got a ‘traffic jam game’ called “Rush Hour”. I watched them push the little plastic cars left and right following some kinky strategy reminding me of Rubik’s cube and then I decided that I would not start playing it, thus avoiding the possibility of being disturbed by visible proofs of my incompetence and impatience.
OUR FEARS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE / fear of pain
Here’s the fourth sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (PP4)
SLAVERY (4) >> LET’S PUT OUR FEARS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
First, keep in mind that there is a great deal of overlap among the fears I’ll describe; each can be entangled with another. Second, it’s entirely normal to have a few fears. (If someone is completely overwhelmed with fears, however, he or she should consider living in a basket.)
Fear of pain
The pain may be emotional or physical; it is a state of being uncomfortable, or in agony, or somewhere in between. First, fear of physical pain: Physical pain is inevitable. We learn that the first time we fall out of a tree or get stung by a bee or endure that first headache, and we learn to accept it. And with all the pills and creams on the market today, the pain can have a short shelf-life. Chronic pain can be a bigger burden, and fortunately there is an ever-increasing arsenal of weapons to combat it.
There is also the physical discomfort that comes with feeling very cold or very hot or very hungry or thirsty. Thousands of years ago our ancestors feared it as well. We know that they took steps to alleviate their discomfort, and our measures are very similar to theirs. We have blankets, clothing, indoor plumbing, and a never-ending supply of food that we can store in our refrigerators and freezers. The problem is that quite often we placate our fear of pain to a point of excess, which results in more discomfort and stress. How? Through purchases of way-too-many winter coats, way-too-large homes, luxurious swimming pools, spas, whirlpools and hot tubs, gourmet foods and expensive liquor.
I’m not suggesting that acquiring possessions is wrong in any way. What is problematic is letting our outgo exceed our income. Isn’t it ironic that our worries can cause us to lay awake nights in silk pajamas on a huge splendid bed in a palatial ocean-front home because our credit cards are maxxed out? Happiness can never be attained in such a state of stress.
This brings us to the other kind of pain: mental and emotional pain. We may or may not play a role in our internal pain. There can be causes out of our immediate control (e.g., being married to a deployed soldier, the serious illness of a loved one, or hereditary mental conditions) and causes over which we can exert some degree of control (a miserable marriage, a crime-ridden neighborhood, a dead-end job, intolerable in-laws).
We’ve established that a credit card is a popular way to deal with the fear of physical discomfort (real or imagined). It probably won’t take you more than 30 seconds to answer this question: What are some of the common methods people use to combat mental and emotional pain? Some of these would undoubtedly be on your list:
•Exercise •Ecstasy
•Cigarettes •Counseling
•Beer •Dope
•Meditation •Vodka
•Pain-killers •Prayer
Sadly, a too-common outcome of some of these weapons against pain is criminal activity, civil disobedience and addiction, which greatly magnifies the original pain, especially if someone is killed by a driver who is returning home after drowning his pain in a nearby pub. Doesn’t sound to me like a clear path to stress-FREEDOM.
<end of sequel 4 – to be continued>
electronic village?
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford and the author of “How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks.” states in the New York Times that “You’ve Got to Have (150) Friends” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html?_r=1
and ends his theory with the words: „welcome to the electronic village”.
What kind of a village may he have envisaged, with no commitments, and no accountability?
Non-competitiveness: an evolutionary anabranch, backwater or dead end?
Tom Merle remarked in a comment that “our western free market societies are really built on greed”. (I must add that the communist experiment was just as much built on greed: on direct greed for power, without the transmission chain of a sophisticated financial system.) He quoted the now infamous words of Gordon Gekko as spoken by actor Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed…”
http://www.facebook.com/stressfreedomguide
The Epicurean communities, on the other hand, have always been based on a cooperative, non-competitive attitude and behavior.
How could such as subspecies not only survive for 2300 years but also positively thrive and flourish for almost 800 years?
Had they followed the laws propagated by evolutionary biologists they must have died out long time ago – just like many small religious communities, including Christian ones, based on non-competitive cooperation. The Scandinavian type of socialist economy based on cooperation could never function, either, according to mainstream economists. But, in fact, it not only does, but makes its “players” happier, more content and less stressed than the people forced to “play” by the rules of a competitive system based on greed. And numerous religious sects (like the Amish in the US), cults, fraternities and sororities, based on non-competitive sharing are still up and running.
I am not sure about the future of anything in general and Epicureanism in particular, but I can imagine that it might continue as a narrow or broad alternative anabranch or backwater, a tolerated or persecuted minority for another few hundreds or thousands of years. It might turn into mainstream only if and when the present mainstream lifestyle based on competitiveness and greed will prove to be a dead end …and leaves enough survivors for an Epicurean revival experiment.
s
RATIONAL THINKING / PP3
Here’s the third sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (PP3)
SLAVERY (3)
RATIONAL THINKING
We’d never attempt skydiving without a parachute, right? It’s such a, well, huge part of the process. Likewise, we can’t set out on the road to stress-FREEDOM without an equally essential tool — knowing how to think logically. To paraphrase Epicurus, an individual cannot be free from the most disturbing fears about the universe as long as he lacks a thoroughly scientific understanding of nature and instead believes in legends, parables, superstition and myths.
Said in a more contemporary way, before we can free ourselves from the chains of the slavery of fear, we have to get a grip. That means that instead of assuming that we have little control over what happens in our personal universe, we learn to differentiate between those elements we can’t control — like weather, some types of disease, and what others think or do; those we can — like our opinions, feelings, beliefs and behaviors; and those over which we can exert influence — like our children’s well-being, politics, our health and our career path.
Getting a grip means not believing in the magic of:
* Good luck and bad luck
* The words “Trust me”
* Losing weight while you sleep
* Predestination and inevitability, or fate
* Turning back the clock with a special face cream
* Blaming others for your reactions
* Re-growing a full head of hair with something in a spray can
* Believing that you “just can’t help it”
* Believing that Jesus appears to us on potato chips and ice formations
Call these kinds of thinking mythical or magical, but don’t call them logical or scientific. And realize that they stand in between you and your happiness.
<end of sequel 3 – to be continued>
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