Time to thrive

Harry Potter’s scar burned whenever Voldemort was near.  The survivor’s did whenever he thought about his cancer.  He laughed. Whatever didn’t kill him had made him slightly insane.  His scar was killing him.

The cancer survivor sat in a corner bar in downtown Chicago sipping his green tea.  A couple of guys at the table behind him bitched loudly about work and the prices of drinks at the bar.  The survivor shook his head.  “You’d think they’d know that those aren’t real problems.”  Cancer had been a blessing in disguised.  He knew what was really important in life.

But there were days when he had slipped into his old habits.  For two years he had worried about his job. Once again he sighed.  Life was too precious to live like that.  He took another sip of his green tea and stared at the half-empty bottles of liquor.  Life was about change. Some good. Some bad (like when his own cells had tried to kill him.).  He peeled another peanut and got lost in the ambient buzz of the voices in the bar.  He had had enough fear.

He had survived ten years since his diagnosis.  Survived — but not truly lived. Being a cancer survivor was great and all. Don’t get him wrong. But he knew he had not used the gift he had been given fully.  He had not been his best.  So many had walked in his shoes and ended up six-feet under.  They probably wish they had been given his gift.  Another sip of green tea burned his lips.  The pain reminded him he was alive. It was time to truly learn how to live.

The man clutched the Rosary in his pocket.  The man at the airport asked him if he knew Jesus. “Yes,” the survivor said, “I talk to him every day.”  It wasn’t the answer the missionary wanted to hear but the survivor didn’t care.  He had faced his own mortality. That gave him an understanding that the earnest kid armed with words would never understand. Well, until it was his turn.

He had battled anxiety. He had battled depression. He still battled anger.  All he wanted was normalcy — something every cancer survivor craves.  His frustration rose at those who tried to steal normalcy from him.  Exercise was his ally — but that had slipped as of late. The devil was creeping back into his life in the form of fear.  He took another sip of tea.  It had cooled a little and felt warm as it slid down this throat and into his stomach.

He scribbled a few notes onto a pad of paper.  It was time to give back to others.  He had spent ten years worrying about a foe who had tried to eliminate him.  As Cee Lo said, “Forget you.”  It was time to focus on others.

He looked at the two complaining men behind him and said, “Hand me your tab.  I’m buying.”   The survivor paid their tab, smiled and walked past them toward the exit of the bar. They looked at him stunned. He had given them one less thing to complain about.

It was time to do more than survive. It was time to thrive.