Tag: choices

Every Day We Live and Die

My friend and mentor Rita Harrison was diagnosed with Stage 4 Brain cancer on December 26. The surgeons said they stopped counting the lesions at 20. The oncologist’s prognosis: “two weeks or a short month.”

Today is February 29, 2020, Leap Day. Rita is still with us, a thin wisp compared to the forthright, kick-ass woman who used to leave me puffing during our “short, German walks.” When she smiles, her light shines through and I recognize for a moment.

She has beat the odds, exceeded expectations, and every day there is as much reason for hope as despair. As the patient who has decided she wants to live, her game plans include the “as well as” she has advocated throughout her career as a healer. Radiation, the latest hormone therapy, accepting light, an invitation to her estranged son, birch water, a massage with Latschenkiefer (mountain pine) are among the things she has undertaken and requested. Some days her husband Paul is unsure if her desires are based in method, meds or madness.

Despite her desire for a “collaboration,” the doctors are too mired in their fears to dare. Hospice, they recommend, and since she refuses, they continue their due diligence of providing the kind of care disconnected from that Living Life to its Fullest thing. To call it wretched and regale you with horror stories is old news. There are a million tales out there of how the System has failed us.

So what does living or dying look like today? That Rita woke up at 4 am asking for a Guinness? That she cannot stand on her own accord but wants to do therapeutic horse riding? That one moment we are paralyzed by the fear that Rita won’t be with us tomorrow, the next we plan our move to a new apartment with a breathtaking view of the ocean. Paul says that he will never be able to enjoy Christmas or New Year or Valentine’s Day celebrations again. So he looks elsewhere for moments of joy…and they are there.

Please continue to visit and donate at https://www.gofundme.com/f/willow-syster.

Happiness and the Pursuit of Work

“I’m just looking for what’ll make me happy Dad,” she said with impatience. Dad had paid for his almost thirty-year-old daughter’s last year of grad school (unfinished), watched her leave one job, then another (finished, finished), until a holding pattern seemed to be setting in, without work or school.

“You don’t get to do that yet,” he blurted. Daughter was similarly built to Dad – that apple not falling far from the tree thing – and he had also not finished college before moving from one job to the next with some regularity. One stint did turn into a 25-year career and growing experience until he noticed one day he had the financial security to say goodbye to the working world.

Well, he thought he was retiring from Work, but the reality is we need to do it our whole lives. Defined as the “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result,” is it work if done in the pursuit of happiness?

I’ve learned the answer is uncategorically Yes, we need to work for and even fight for our happiness …and even though it may look different for each of us, it’s achievement somehow involves making peace with Money, Health and Love. Think about whether that balancing act is a life-long assignment or not!

A combination of:

  1. lucky breaks
  2. good choices, and
  3. putting in the time

seemed responsible for this dad’s ability to retire early, but I suspect now that all three of those things were just different kinds of work. And then the task of finding happiness in the other areas of his life began in earnest. With two divorces behind him, what does success in love look like? The effort to understand what makes the people in his life tick – and then respect it – continues. Good health had even been a bit out of reach. Being given the genes of an 80-year-old dad will do that. So, coming into his 60’s, life was good because he could sleep as much as he needed and loved, whatever time of the day. Simple pleasures are such happiness …but he worked for it.

…so what do you think of the two Happiness quotes I found? If finding happiness in your life looks different, I invite you to comment, follow my blog, and listen to the Ask Rita podcasts for new perspectives on age-old questions.