By Philip Drucker
Firstly, I'd like to apologize to all of you who read yesterday's Ma Jolie Communique and thought I was cashing in my chips. I am glad to report this is hardly the case. True, I was dealt a bad card, the Queen of Colon Cancer (but not of Hearts) for the second time in approximately one year, this time the little biomass bugger hiding in my liver of all things, but my prognosis is good and, as you may have already noticed, my overall mood has lightened considerably since yesterday.
Going forward, I will begin weekly chemo treatments starting next Wednesday for the foreseeable future. My oncologist has assured me they kept my personal chemo cocktail mix on file and will be serving it up at whatever time constitutes happy hour for infusion rooms across the country. It must be cancer o'clock somewhere I always say.
If all goes well and with a bit of lady luck I will be for all intents and purposes back to where I began this part of the journey, I call it Round II, meaning cancer free and ready for whatever wicked comes my way including if necessary, Round III.
As always, you have my promise I will do the best I can do. I will as before, 1. Trust my doctors, 2. Believe in the treatments and, be as positive (or unconscious as the case may be) as possible. In other words, it will be my first-priority to be the best patient I can possibly be for if I lose this gig, unemployment is a real downer, a spot on the graveyard shift, if you know what I mean and yes, I mean a real graveyard.
For those of you who know me, you may have noticed I have an odd fascination with writing and re-writing my epitaph. Each one, in poorer taste than the one before. My latest is "I Should Have Had a V-8." This is a particularly odd habit I picked up as I intend to be cremated. Dust in the Wind, you know? Don't hate me. I have cancer.
This brings me, believe it or not to an important philosophical question I have asked myself repeatedly and refined many times over and over these past three years. The question has three parts.
Q1: Is there a life after our biological life? A. Yes.
Q2: Are we subject to the philosophical or perhaps religious belief that our spiritual essence returns to another physical form called re-incarnation, rebirth or transmigration? A: No.
Q3: If not re-incarnation, then what? A: I don't know. All I "know" is on this plane at the cross-section of energy, frequency and vibration, we get but one life and when we are no longer subject to the whims and illusion of movement, sound and vision, one final death.
So, maybe I'm still a little bit depressed, but really, I'm not. Let's read on.
Re-incarnation does not work for me. There is something about a "wheel" of karma, of fortune, that always dead-ends me (ha ha) at Hamster, as in stuck on the proverbial Hamster Wheel of life. Wanna buy a vowel, an ounce of penance or perhaps even eternal salvation? I know I like to analogize life to playing the cards you are dealt, with free-will thrown in for someone up there's amusement, but life, this life is too precious to be but a mere series of flawed and ultimately ill-fated, let's call it adventures for the brave and at a minimum, learning experiences for the more reticent and bookish of souls. I just don't buy it.
We are here and we have whether we realize it or not, reason and purpose. As a practitioner of mindfulness (another gift of the Big "C") the place to happy is here. The time to be happy is now and if you are breathing (another far too overlooked blessing in and of itself) there is more right with you than wrong. While you are breathing, there is life and where there is life there is hope.
The common expression, "If not in this life then the next" is nothing more than a lost opportunity of cosmic scale and dimension. Never, ever, fritter and waste your hours in an offhand way, Roger. This is where it all gets a bit heavy. You do not need to seek perfection. You already are.
You cannot fix yourself or be fixed (this coming from a guy with Cancer mind you) because you are not broken. You cannot find yourself because you are not lost. You can only live life to the fullest by experiencing as much of it as you can as a series of moments that began long ago and in reality, have already ended.
We are just travelers home and watching the pretty pictures from our latest vacation, illuminated by the light, going around the carousel, one slide after the other. Not in a straight line, but in a circle for which there is no real beginning and no end. Unless you believe in time and space, and most importantly, the illusion of depth.
I don't and you know why that's funny? It makes me a believer in the flat earth theory. Did you know there is a dating app for flat earthers? Why yes, there is. Check out Flatr for yourself here.
All around us are signs if not direct indications we are living in what amounts to a flat screen TV. That's right, a two-dimensional, level, smooth, even uniform television screen. You know, flat.
Next time, I will tell you why it all matters, (remember, all matter matters) and at the same time why you should never ever waste your time, space and yes, energy trying to argue with a Trumpanzee. Till next "time".
Re-Phil?
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