What Do I Want?

This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind...let it be something good. - Author Unknown

This quote lived on the blog that I kept during my cancer treatment.  Every day, at that time, it was easy to remember that each day was the beginning of a new day, to use for good.  And, although I never forgot that, I have found that my life now is pretty much the same as it was before being diagnosed and treated.  Sort of.

So that got me thinking.  If life now is pretty much the same as before, is that what I want?  Short answer is equally yes and no.  This first entry will explain.

First, yes I can hardly be any more pleased than to have life be pretty much the same as it was before I was diagnosed with and treated for an incurable cancer.  To be able to have new days with my incredible wife and most amazing blessing of a daughter, to be working a dream job that I love going to every single time, and to be able to continue to do something good make it perfectly okay for me to have life the 'same' as it was.  Since my diagnosis in the early part of 2008, I have lost too many friends and too many others that I knew to be able to say anything less than the fact that I am thankful to be so blessed to be able to say I am still here.

So how is it that I can say that having life pretty much the same is not what I want?  Well, regardless of when my last day on this Earth is, life is short for each of us.  I have had the benefit of being told that I have a really nasty form of cancer.  I have also had the benefit of completing what is considered one of the most invasive and intense forms of chemotherapy that exists.  To be one of the few that has experienced and survived those two things has changed me and that compels me to want to have more than the same because there is no reason not to follow your heart, as the quote by Steve Jobs captures so well:

“.. almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

That is why the title of this blog is 'Dare to Live On' - because I have been given the opportunity to do just that and I both hope and believe that sharing my experience can possibly help someone else to do the same.