Thus and So

Writer's Note: In October of 2025 I began the most illuminating journey of my life - one that took me off the road and would ultimately lead to a diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. In December of 2025, I moved into an apartment with my daughter and while my external travels have been limited, my internal explorations have taken me to uncharted territory. If you no longer wish to keep receiving blog posts from The Midlife Mile, please unsubscribe or email me at themidlifemile@gmail.com. Blog posts may be delivered to your email from the midelife mile gmail address or directly from Wix.

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We are not afraid of birth. It is, in most cases, a celebratory event – welcoming new life, new potential. Beginnings. Just assuredly as birth is essential to life…well, you know where I am going with this. At what point in human history did death become the enemy? A failure? An ending?

In common medical understanding, stage 4 cancer is incurable, but not imminently terminal. The probability stands that one’s life is shortened to some degree, and with this comes all the emotional reactions, the urge to fight and see disease as the enemy and to begin a transactional relationship with every decision you make. (If I do my meditation practice, I will purify this cancer right out of me!)  What also comes is a profound opportunity to begin relating to life in a way one could have been doing all along.   How is it that the very thought of our death brings about surges of anxiety and fear? We wrench ourselves away from these troubling feelings, entertaining ourselves myriadly (oh, so easy to do in the western world). It hurts to think about it so we work endless hours, turn on the TV, and drink our gin.

In Buddhism, we contemplate what are known as the four mind changings. If we are really serious about it – we spend hundreds of hours rolling them over in our thoughts. One of these contemplations is to truly think about and understand that the nature of all things is impermanent. The contemplation doesn’t make a judgment call. The instructions aren’t - think about impermanence, but be afraid of it in the case of death. The truth of impermanence is embedded in all things if we truly choose to pay attention. Thinking about impermanence lessens attachment and gives a glimpse into the illusory nature of what we normally perceive as solid and lasting. It helps us to further appreciate the preciousness of our human life. Somewhere along the way of bending my thoughts to these contemplations, I began to shift how I spent my time. It is true, the more time I spent in stillness and practice, the more my life opened in symmetry. The notion of how am I spending my time anyway? became embedded as I further increased time for retreat and explored my awareness during my daily life. Last year my practice continued to unfold as I lived and volunteered at a meditation center – as close as I’d ever come to living a practice centered life. There is a certain almost automatic response to the notion of terminal illness. We all think about it – how would we spend our time if we only had thus and so amount of time left? Most likely scenario – party ’til you drop and then go play and do all the things you’ve always wanted to do. The thing is, we’ve always had only thus and so amount of time left. For me, the question – how am I spending my time anyway?  became sort of a modus operandi a couple of years ago. Wherever I traveled, practice (turning my mind to awareness through meditation) was how I focused my days.

Both pre and post diagnosis, my daughter will sometimes ask what I am doing today or how am I spending my time. It’s so kind and I think in a way she is looking for assurance that I am engaged in some activity that will make me happy. From the outside looking in, it may appear that I am bored or inactive. What I am doing, though, and what has been my aspiration these past few years, is to learn how to increase my awareness of what love really feels like and how to send it out to others. I am learning to be still with whatever emotions and feelings arise and to not push them away. I am learning that fighting cancer doesn’t mean I will lose when I die or that I didn’t do enough to stay healthy. I will die. And, the head’s up, the shattering of what I relied on as predictable, the increasing and absolute presence I feel in this moment, and the undeniability of looking deep inside and seeing new ways to open – well, cancer is (mostly) a gift to this spiritual traveler. In the initial days upon my diagnosis, there were a few things I knew innately before all the thought habits started habiting. I had a felt sense of Okay-ness. And I also felt how blessed and beyond fortunate I was. Cancer unlocks a potential for seeing more clearly. A potential to find the secure wholeness and love that, as the dharma teaches, is our birthright. It is always within us. The dharma also teaches the possibility for enlightenment, whatever that means. Today, during an online retreat I attended, Tsoknyi Rinpoche said that “if we are only concerned with our own needs, we don’t need Buddhahood”. In other words, enlightenment, or Buddhahood, isn’t for us. We don’t do it to save ourselves. I think this is the same for this life itself. And, by spending my time focused on love and opening up to others, however long this physical body endures, I think will be of the most benefit to others – enlightenment or no. It has been six months since my diagnosis and I have really struggled with my spiritual practice. Finally, last month I gave it up almost entirely, fully planting myself in cancerland and emotionally tethering myself to notions of outcome. And yet...once again, I was led back to the meditation center by some internal mechanism. Somehow, I got myself there and settled into a few days of solitary practice…mostly sitting outdoors, hugging trees, loving crow…and coming back, over and over again, to the present moment, each time with less effort. I began to recall what I could be doing with my time. For a long while now I have said aloud two aspirations: to learn what unconditional love feels like and to find the next place of practice. And each day, cancer or no cancer, these aspirations are being filled. One day, my awareness will not return to this human body. Perhaps some tendril of love will remain. And perhaps my essence will carry a bit of it on to the next place of practice.