TW: cancer related – my good news may not help others facing their own cancer journeys.

In a way, I feel bad posting something celebratory about the fact that, this week, I have been celebrating being 10 years clear of cancer. I know quite a few other people who are now facing terminal prognoses with cancer or who are having to live with cancer as a kind of long term chronic illness.

But people who have had cancer are often so unfailingly compassionate to one another, my sense is mostly they’d want me to celebrate. My celebration won’t diminish their anguish; in fact it might make it worse. But I do have a sense that some words I first encountered as I was beginning to recover are words that many of them would affirm for me and others like me; in fact, for everyone.

These words are from the blessing “A morning offering” in Benedictus by John O’Donohue. Benedictus was published in 2007, one short year before John died, suddenly, on holiday, in his sleep. He had celebrated his 52nd birthday just two days before he died. Once you know that, these words hold even more depth, I think.

May I have courage today
to live the life that I would love;
to postpone my dream no longer,
but do at last what I came here for
and waste my heart on fear no more

I have read various bits of research regarding what elderly people most want their children and grandchildren to know. My lasting impression of that research is how the things that so often preoccupy us in earlier stages of life really don’t matter to people once they get older, and at last have time to realise what actually matters most. What mattered most all along, really. I expect a lot of the older people quoted in the research would echo John O’Donohue’s words to us.

May we have courage to live the lives that we would love, to postpone our dreams no longer, but do at last what we came here for, and waste our hearts on fear no more.