Sonya Sukalski
@sonyasukalski
Retired in 2022. I enjoy writing, gardening, hiking, biking, and new ideas.
Sonya Sukalski
@sonyasukalski
Retired in 2022. I enjoy writing, gardening, hiking, biking, and new ideas.
My dad wanted me to know about this interview with Jon Baptiste whose wife had cancer…
Jon Batiste Almost Got Kicked Out Of Juilliard : Fresh Air : NPR
Too often, we view the fight as an unalloyed virtue. Instead of sharing our preferences and desires before we get ill (as though it’s some sort of bad luck charm), we simply hope for the best and then wait far too long (and create too much family stress) before embracing the next step in our journey.
Lost in a featureless wasteland of my own mortality, and finding no traction in the reams of scientific studies, intracellular molecular pathways, and endless curves of survival statistics, I began reading literature again: Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilyich, Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, Woolf, Kafka,
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spouse, rather than the patient): “We’re gonna fight and beat this thing, Doc.” The armament varies, from prayer to wealth to herbs to stem cells. To me, that hardness always seems brittle, unrealistic optimism the only alternative to crushing despair.
Insightful, and my response, guided by the wisdom of “Stress Less, Accomplish More” is to meditate twice a day, and let all the challenges surface, inform me, and integrate however they need to.
It may be that the most defining characteristic of our times is that, again, walls and weapons feature as prominently now as they once did in medieval times. Porous borders are understood in some quarters to be areas of threat and certain chaos, and whether real or imagined, enforced separation is posited as the solution. Walls, ammunition — they
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