By Michael Biegner
My therapist asked me a stark question yesterday, one I was not prepared to answer: where is your joy these days?
Given that this cancer has taken away my ability to DO the things that in the past brought me joy, as we head into the slog that is this dying season, where do I find my joy?
To be sure, my grandsons – Jude and Jack – provide joy. And if I am honest, the poetry lessons I have been doing for the couple of ESL 4th graders at my niece’s school have brought me joy. But given that I rise each day, trying to navigate the side effects of these chemo treatments, and given the onset of colder weather, I have found it difficult to answer this question.
Last night while trying to avoid the news, I stumbled on an ESPN fundraiser for the Jimmy V. Foundation. It has been 27 years since Jimmy Valvano, head coach of North Carolina State basketball team gave the famous speech. You know, the “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up” speech.
During this speech, Jimmy V. said there are three things one needs to do in order to have a full life: 1) laugh every day, 2) spend some time in thought every day and 3) do something to stir one’s emotions; to be passionate.
If you do this every day, he promised the audience, that is a full life.
So as I continue to seek the things that cancer has NOT removed from the range of my abilities, I am considering these three things as top of mind: if I can do these three things daily, maybe, maybe, maybe that is enough.
Jimmy Valvano died only two months after he gave this speech, and yet still, he promoted his belief in never giving up. Those of you who know me, understand that I have problems with what I refer to as “toxic positivity” – the polyanna-ish belief that if I only believe hard enough, things will go my way. This is not how the world works sometimes.
At one point during the speech, the producer flashed a light at Jimmy, wanting him to wrap up in thirty seconds. Jimmy provided a moment of hard truth when he said, “I have tumors all over my body, like I care that this guy wants me to wrap up in thirty seconds.”
It caught the audience by surprise, I think. It was evidence that we are not called to ignore the truths that direct us, but to confront them, openly. Jimmy V. was no Pollyanna. I suspect he knew that his time was limited, but he still made his clarion call anyway, because that was who he was.
So when I say I will never give up, it doesn’t mean that my body won’t give up on me. It doesn’t mean that the chemo may and probably will stop working at some point. But this clip has renewed my faith in finding my joy in the few things that cancer can never touch: my heart, my mind, my soul. It is with those things I will search for my joy during this dying season.