Beyond Survival

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I became obsessed with survival. I walked around in t-shirts emblazoned with "survivor." My goal was survival. How long did I have to live? How could I increase my chances of survival? I looked up statistics for five-year survival rates for my type of cancer. What could I do to beat these odds? This actuarial approach might have been a useful exercise if I had been writing myself an insurance policy, but it was not a good strategy for living.

Then, I realized the obvious: Survival is not an option. If your goal is survival, I can say with absolute certainty that you will fail. No one gets out of this world alive. You must find another goal.

It dawned on me that I had spent more years than I care to mention focused on survival, working to keep food on the table, pay the bills, stay alive. I kept my family alive, which represents a slightly broader purpose. But I spent more time thinking about survival than I should have -- given that, even as a non-athlete, I am more likely to win eight gold medals in the Olympics than to survive this terminal condition we call life. Survival is not enough.

If not survival, then what? I needed something deeper to live for, some broader goal, some deeper purpose, some dream. Dreams are the first casualty of cancer. How can I look beyond the next month or year if I don't know how long I have?

But without a sense of purpose, without hope, there is no life -- just survival. As American poet Langston Hughes said, "Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow." This barren field is where you must plant the seeds of your dreams.

Where do you find this sense of purpose? Look for the interests and activities that attract you and give you joy without a discernible, rational cause. What you love cannot be explained. Look for the opportunities that you are drawn to, the opportunities to serve, the needs of others that you can meet. Look for the places where you are immersed in an activity, where you lose yourself.

For me, this is spending time with family, writing, paddling whitewater, or yoga. I look up and hours have passed, but I didn't notice. These activities may not make any sense to someone else. I think about president Teddy Roosevelt after he left the White House and embarked on a difficult journey down the River of Doubt in the Amazon. He was compelled to do this, and didn't flinch. He commented that it made him "feel like a boy again." What a remarkable gift for a man of 54 to feel like a boy again. He had reversed time. Given that he almost lost his life on this journey, this feeling of excitement, of being fully alive, was more important to him than actually staying alive.

Survival is egotistical. It assumes that my body is important to keep alive. But I had to recognize that I am not that important. It is not about me. Keeping alive is only important because of what it allows me to do with my life. So I need to find something that I feel is important, and spend my life on it.

A strange thing happens when you do something you really love. Time stops. If you have ever lost track of time while immersed in a labor of love, you know what I mean. Survival is concerned with clock time, with seconds and minutes. It is, as T.S. Eliot says, measuring our lives with coffee spoons.

Survival is concerned with how much time you can pack into your life. Purpose is concerned with how much life you can put into the time you have.