Two monks were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. “Come on, girl,” said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud. The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he said. “It is dangerous. Why did you do that?” “I left the girl there,” the first monk said. “Are you still carrying her?”

I think that this story is a lot of what I was exploring in our friend’s account of her struggle with front squats.  For me, the first cycle of chemo, was fairly overwhelming, and I wasn’t even taking the drugs.  The surgery was also full of angst.  And so, I kept my eyes down.  I looked out about a week and no further.  I would look at today on the calender and do exactly what I had to do and just that: work, taxi the kids around, go to doctor’s appointments.  But, as I mentioned, the feel of treatment, and, our self-identity; that of cancer survivor, has changed.  A future, aware of, but, not dominated by cancer extends around us.

I think the wisdom I see S exhibiting in her struggle with front squats is that we carry our emotional burdens around and forget to put them down.  In order to lift the barbell  she had to stop a moment and put down the other burdens she carries in order to deal with the immediate challenge of the barbell.  And to my mind that is the same lesson that the two Zen monks teach us — and so my analogy of gym, and church and mediation hall extends a bit further.  I’m not certain S is aware of that, or that she thinks about it in that way — rather that is my understanding, or mis-understanding.  Yet, I dare any man here to stop and have a little cry before they go for a 1 rep max.  Generally, we are so emotionally constipated, that were we to let our guard down to do this we would instead be overwhelmed by weeping.  Weeping about the gentleness we wanted our fathers’ to show us, angry that we were mocked for any sign of gentleness or compassion by adults and peers, weeping about our own fears of inadequacy and unavailability to and for our children, weeping at our losses of mentors, and friends, and so on, and so on….   It is unfortunate that in the story girl=danger, we risk, re-creating the misogyny implicit in our culture and gender if we are not careful.  Yet, we carry our emotions bound up in boxes, boxes wrapped in plain brown paper,  so that we don’t even know what they contain, and yet, we carry them.  I have wept more in the last year then in the last 30.  I have cried in pride of my children.  I have wept over the burden of ailing parents.  I have mourned P, and my own mortality, brought into sharp contrast by cancer.  Am I done, probably, not.  Am I “good” because of it, certainly not — merely human and finally waking up to it.

I don’t think that P and I will ever be able to put all of cancer down.  And yet at the end of the day, I don’t want to be the monk that carries the “girl” all day long.  Moreover, not all about cancer has been “bad” we have been overwhelmed by generosity, kindness and love, so much love, love from unexpected quarters.   We are by no means done with treatment, 6 more weeks of chemo, 4 weeks of rest, and then 4 weeks of daily radiation.  And then as P describes, ongoing Tamoxifen, upto 5 years, and 6 and 12 month check ups with rounds of tests each.  Yet, we are almost ready to exhale, and to take another breath as life takes on a new normal.