Tomorrow will be my last radiation treatment day. Aside from some urinary changes and increasing fatigue I am handling this OK. In fact, I have come to the notion that having prostate cancer has been a kind of wakeup call for me. We all know that everyone is going to die, but somehow, that doesn't apply to us. Well, when you get the cancer greeting, that exemption suddenly expires.
Why would this be a good thing? It could be worse, and it provides a good reality check. Just what the hell are you doing with what's left of your life? Waiting for something so that something else will happen? Putting off dealing with that little dictator in your head that talks to you all of the time about crap you really should care less about? Beginning to wonder what actually happens to people, or the consciousness that identifies individual people, after they die? More importantly, wondering what kind of life one wishes to lead during the time left. That's what PC did for me. Woke me up.
Be Cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
- Prospero
The Tempest
Shakespeare
Well, everything in the world has been bloody sanitised with health and safety, hasn’t it. There isn’t really anything left in the world where you can go out and actually kill yourself. I like being in control of my own destiny, really. You can go out racing on your bike, make one little mistake, and that’s it: you’re dead. I love all that. Being so near yet so far.
Guy Martin
No comments:
Post a Comment