Physical changes will happen. Thats the process. The treatment is harsh and sometimes the cancer itself can cause physical changes. Such as Head and Neck cancers that invariably require a facial surgery and mostly result in changes of your physical appearance. So this will happen. It’s what we need to accept. Many changes that you might not expect and others that you will absolutely detest. But here’s the thing. How much do we perceive our physical appearance to be a part of who we really are? without sounding preachy, does cancer destroy the person we are, our soul? No, not if you don’t let it.
Look at what we face today. A potentially deadly virus that can wipeout a large section of humanity. While I sit at home, isolated from the rest of the world, going through a roller coaster of emotions, I recognise this brutal fact. I have invested my time, energy, social life, family life, personal life and compromised my sanity at multiple occasions for the last couple of years to build a business, which now can very well have the potential of being destroyed due to a virus.
As economy gets dilapidated (if it hasn’t already) so do our dreams of creating something for us ourselves, however in all this chaos there is a strange sense of clarity and insightfulness. We realise that we are not what we create or for that matter what we look like, its insignificant in the larger scheme of things.
It’s insignificant when we are swaying between life and death. What really matters is who we are. While our identity (which we believe is formed largely by the way we look) can be destroyed or changed, however who we are in our core and the way we utilise this to live our lives, is what really matters and that should become our true identity.
It’s also easy for me to sit here and talk about all the above, as I haven’t truly gone through physical changes as one would when battling cancer, however I think its safe to say that we are all shedding some form of ourselves and our physical identity at this time. So in lieu of this and the life that we are living today, lets recalibrate and understand what’s happening to us and the part we have to play in this game called life. We can only change the way we see the world when we change the way see ourselves.
If you would like to talk to somebody who can help you through this process, don’t hesitate to reach out – hello@carerforcancer.com / 9900016441
