Losing our focus? January 2005

After the chemo I had surgery and after the surgery I finally treated myself to an eye exam for a new pair of glasses. “A funny thing happens to us as we get to our age” said the ophthalmologist. “We lose our focus.” He was born in 1960, the same year I was born.

He’s so right, on so many levels.

Good lord, I’ve lost the tenacity of my younger days. Feisty didn’t begin to describe it. Picking my battles wasn’t necessary. I had enough piss and vinegar for all of them, great or small. I tore through life, one of those tiny women who terrorize.

Sometimes losing one’s focus can be a good thing for society.

I know something about these golden year things. Mine started when I was 25 . One by one all my joints have given out on me. My hair turned prematurely gray. Oh yes, that’s what we all say, isn’t it? I was put together with used parts, I would joke.

The diagnosis of cancer and subsequent chemotherapy, double mastectomy and oophorectomy (wherein the ovaries are removed -- an “oofie” the nurses call it) have left my animal brain indignant, outraged and frustrated.

My human brain can do all sorts of interesting things with this; I can look at it through the lens of spiritual challenge. I can look at it as a call to evaluate my life and the time I have left. I can, as Viktor Frankl put it, ask what Life wants of me, not the other way around. But my animal brain is having none of it. It’s still pissed off.

I thought old Viktor could teach me something new but I see that I have learned his lessons treading my own path. I’m 45. I didn’t go to a death camp but I did get my face slammed up against that glass wall for a good look. Couple of times now.

I’m still waiting for a renewal of some sort. Springtime maybe.

Please – I am not complaining. Much. Just ruminating and sharing. The last time I wrote something like this I got letters trying to console me and convert me to Christianity. Sigh. I don’t need consolation. I choose to live. It’s normal, I am beginning to see, to suffer.

Shunryu Suzuki said “suffering is how we extend ourselves, it is how we live our lives.” And that we see all beauty against an ever-changing backdrop of chaos. In his words I found tremendous solace and meaning.