Source: Spirituality & Health
As a surgeon I have used the word “cancer” — the C-word — thousands of times in my life. I have spent my entire professional life researching it, trying to find ways to resect it, suppress it, and, whenever possible, outright annihilate it. I knew what it was. I just never imagined what it could do. I thought it was just a word. I was wrong. It’s nothing like a word. It’s a force.
I tripped over it, actually. I went to sleep for what I believed was a relatively routine surgery. The details are not important but the theme is. When I awoke, I was told my procedure had been “aborted.” I was in bit of a post-anesthetic haze because I remember thinking to myself, “Boy, did they ever goof! I can’t have an abortion. I’m a man.” Then it dawned on me. Surgeons never abort procedures — unless something’s gone terribly wrong. It sank in. I found out my surgery was halted because my surgeon had encountered a tumor. Surely benign, everyone on the staff reassured me. Just a precaution. Best not to proceed, I was told, until they were positive it was not malignant.
As my wife drove me home, I remember telling myself, “This will be okay.” But then I inexplicably turned to her and said, “We’d better call the kids.” Two days later we were gathered in my surgeon’s office. He’s a talented, compassionate young man, but he was peering down, gazing at my medical chart as he came through the door. He started speaking to my lab report, so I knew. Still, the C-word was the loudest sound I have ever heard. I became completely deaf. I could see my surgeon’s lips were moving but, to this day, I couldn’t tell you what he said after those two syllables.
My life was utterly changed.
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7 Steps to Make Happiness Last
The experience of happiness simply doesn’t last. It can’t, given the very nature of the brain. But that fact by no means suggests that happiness is not a worthy pursuit. Of course it is! The key I believe is to pursue happiness in a dedicated way that actually works. And the fact that this path to happiness is proven to work says everything about who we are deep down, and what we truly aspire to.
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