Universal payload
When I first started out working in a cancer hospital, tumors bulging out of the body like a ball were very common. We saw those almost every day. There was a lot of pain there. Today, I don’t see that anymore.
Those days I produced radiotherapy plans for breast cases at a rate of four per hour. Almost every patient came for radiotherapy after double mastectomy. I saw countless torsos but hardly a breast. There was a lot of pain there. Demographics today shifted completely.
That time the most prevalent cancers were nasopharyngeal and breast. Today, even the double-quoted third world moved on considerably. We have made tremendous progress.
Those days among less affluent communities a single radiotherapy hospital served a vast geographic area. Whenever a treatment machine went out of order sliding open the door of the treatment suite from the inside felt like a massacre. A storm of eager patients would be pressing, “When is the machine going to be fixed? When can we restart our treatment? When is the machine going to be fixed? When can we restart our treatment?” Even those settings grew out of any resemblance to how it was before.
Looking at cancer as a universal payload, that is a feat. We have come such a long, long way. But there is still a lot of pain. We acknowledge that.
Pain can be made sense of as a universal payload. More a universal payload than individuals: whether it is a friend, a family member or ourselves. This is compassion and solidarity. We are in it together. What I see happening to others can happen to me too. That includes cancer, dementia, diabetes and any illness; that includes losing employment, losing my home to fires that wipe out entire towns, getting shoved onto subway tracks and coming in contact with the third rail; that includes being found by soldiers or getting trapped under the rubbles in a disaster zone.
Sometimes pain and suffering can be very real, and the person has to walk through that alone. The greatest pain of all is perhaps in seeing someone we love unwell.
Bad things do happen to good people. Why not? And, why not me? Avoiding bad things shouldn’t be the motivation for doing good. That bad things shouldn’t happen to good people is not God’s logic; that is not how God works. That is not how cause-and-effects are wired.
Some cancer cases take a little patience; others take a whole lot more. We fully acknowledge the pain aggressive cancers bring to individuals. We do not understate the disruption.
If we zoom into ourselves we can drive ourselves into the rabbit hole (English expression) or the cul-de-sac of the bull’s horn (Chinese expression). Indeed I have witnessed how, in trying situations, many patients continued to be open, to move out of themselves, to reach out rather than to reach in, to opt for solidarty rather than isolation.