I'm constantly surprised when I speak to an old friend who tells me that they are going through some horrible, trying illness - an unresponsive infection, an ulceration, a digestive disorder, even a stressful divorce - and they tell me about it with the comment "...of course it's nothing compared to what you're going through...". Well, bullshit! It's all illness and/or stress and it all sucks and if it's potentially fatal it's serious and it's the reality of that individual's life. Cancer sucks, but it does not trump all. We are all on the road to our own demise anyway, and none of us gets out of here alive, and most of us will do a lot of suffering on the way. In the meantime, we must take every opportunity to see the beauty around us and to appreciate the things that are going right in our lives. So of course if you are allowing a small wound to drag you into despair, well then okay, it's nothing compared to what I'm going through, or what so many people who are living productive lives in the process of dying from fatal illnesses. So get over it, snap out of it if that's the reality. Otherwise, acknowledge your suffering as your true experience and then stick it behind a moment of beholding the beauty of life, of just loving a quiet moment, a cup of coffee or a giggle at a stupid TV show...or whatever blows your dress up. I'm tired of feeling guilty because I've got the cancer card to play, which I try not to very often, and someone I'm talking with is only, at the moment, dealing with, say, psoriasis. Believe me, I get how much mayhem that can play in your life and that your reality in coping with that is big challenging stuff.
Yesterday I went to a "Laughter Yoga" class. I was very excited about it; I have been hearing about this for a few years and I of course already believe in the healing power of laughter, and have been pursuing it in the "What's so funny about cancer" group at Gilda's and the addictive watching of "America's Funniest Home Videos" that developed during Dave's original cancer journey. I imagined the class as a sort of organized game of "Ha Ha" like we used to play in high school when everyone lay on the floor, head on the belly of the next person, and the first started by saying "ha" then the next "ha ha" and so on, and by the end everyone was laughing hysterically. I loved that and it always ended in paroxysmal laughter for me, very cathartic. But this was more like the improve classes I took in my late teens when I fancied myself a theatre type; classes I hated so much that I knew I would have to focus on my singing and not acting. It brought all of my innate shyness to the fore and made me self conscious in a very painful way. I couldn't find a way to politely excuse myself as one of my patient's had attended at my suggestion and my close friend knows the instructor....not to mention that the room was freezing and I was under dressed for the experience...I sure am glad to have my game group and that we were meeting the same night. There's where true healing laughter lies....playing stupid word games with a bunch of smart, funny women. Even though they all work together and have a framework of people to tell stories about who I don't know, I'm able to enjoy their humor in a real way. That, for me, is laughter yoga...yoking my body, mind, spirit and heart. With my funny bone.
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