Shit just happens

As before, I defer to the excellent blog of Dana Jennings to tackle a subject I've touched on briefly here: the words people use around cancer, such as "battle," that seem so useless when you're actually in the situation. I really don't want an obit that says I lost my battle with cancer, since it's not an even battleground, and it's not really a battleground at all in the sense that a human being can't actually win against what are really random circumstances. I know that completely contradicts what some people believe about optimism and the human spirit, but I don't believe that people who "lose their battle" were somehow not sufficiently strong or positive -- or that those who declare they will beat their cancer, and do beat it, have some magic weapon the rest of us don't have. Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America deals with this eloquently. As does Jennings's blog.

What matters more to me than being declared a winner or a loser is how I live the time I have left. I don't think I'd mind someone writing that I finished my struggle, because it is a struggle, and it will end. But you don't win or lose that one. Shit just happens.