Letting it happen....

The flip side of which is letting go of the worrying....

I was on the phone a few days ago with a fellow board member (and the founder) of one of the nonprofits with which I am involved. She has a lot of energy, and smiles and laughs easily. And it's a big, true, infectious laugh. (I kinda want to record it to use as her ringtone when she calls.) I was jealous.

I laugh, and I have fun, but even then I still feel this sense of restraint. I can't really get release that big, true, infectious laugh yet. Not that I'm faking anything, it just feels reserved and isn't a true release. It's hard to forget everything at every level of my brain. Part of it is my brain knowing that it'll be a while before I can really believe the cancer is gone (see? I used "the cancer" not "my" cancer--I can learn!). It's a subtle but persistent damper hanging out just under the surface.

This restraint must go. I may as well have cancer if my subconscious is going to act like I do. Yes, time heals. One passage from Lance Armstrong's book that has stuck in my mind is:

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?

Looking at that from a different angle, it's obvious that you can influence what comes after pain, if you want. (Well, even if you don't want to, and don't do anything, that's a choice and influence.) But his overall point is that quitting makes the pain worse. I'm not going to quit, I just need to keep moving in the right direction. My subconscious hasn't quit either, but I feel like it is riding the brake a little too much. So hey, subconscious, ease up on the brake and let's go faster, I'll steer! We'll get there. (Not sure how all that fits into the id, ego, and super-ego structure.)

Since I'm anthropomorphizing, I need to post this cool animation I saw a while ago. This is based on an image created by Dr. Fritz Kahn, a German doctor/illustrator from the first half of the 20th century (no, not a Nazi doctor--he was Jewish and had to run from the Nazis). It's his drawing of the human body as an industrial factory--"industrial palace" is the translation from the original German, I believe. Click HERE for a version of the image you can make even bigger, if you click on it. I can't locate the appendix department.

Beautiful morning out, I'm going for a run. Keep moving, keep moving.