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Until we have brushed up against mortality, life seems boundless and we'd prefer to keep it that way. It seems that there will always be time to set out in search of happiness. First I have to get my degree, pay off my loans, let the children grow up, retire...I'll worry about happiness later. When we put off till tomorrow the quest for the essential, we may find life slipping through our fingers without ever having savored it.
Cancer sometimes cures this strange nearsightedness, this dance of hesitations. By exposing life
's brevity, a diagnosis of cancer can restore life's true flavor. A few weeks after my diagnosis, I had the odd feeling a veil had been lifted that until then had dimmed my sight. One Sunday afternoon, in the small, sunny room of our tiny house, I was looking at Anna. Focused and peaceful, she was sitting on the floor near the coffee table, trying her hand at translating French poems into English. For the first time, I saw her as she was, without wondering whether I should prefer someone else.
A change came over me which I believe is irreversible. Questions of prestige, of political success, of financial status, became all at once unimportant. In those first hours when I realized I had cancer, I never thought of my seat in the Senate, of my bank account, or of the destiny of the free world...My wife and I have not hand a quarrel since my illness was diagnosed. I used to scold her about squeezing the toothpaste from the top instead of the bottom, about not catering sufficiently to my fussy appetite, about making up guest lists without consulting me, about spending too much on clothes. Now I am either unaware of such matters , or they seem irrelevant...
In their stead has come a new appreciation of things I once took for granted--- eating lunch with a friend, scratching Muffet's ears and listening for his purrs, the company of my wife, reading a book or magazine in the quite cone of my bed lamp at night, raiding the refrigerator for a glass of orange juice or a slice of coffee cake. For the first time I think I actually am savoring life. I realize, finally, that I am not immortal. I shudder when I remember all the occasions that I spoiled for myself - even when I was in the best of health - by false pride, synthetic values, and fancied slights.
