balance

So many nice things happened today, it was as if God was showing me that there's no need to despair.

One of my favorite quotes: After all, it's not having things that makes us happy. It's being a part of things.

From whence this font of wisdom? John Corbett's character, Chris, on Northern Exposure. I'm pretty sure he was quoting someone, or maybe not -- I've never been able to find an attribution for the quote, and I've spent a few hours looking. It doesn't really matter who said it, because it doesn't change the fundamental appeal of the sentiment. Stuff is just stuff, people are what matter.

Today, I reached out to a few people who were all there to support me. And serendipitously, a small handful of others called or sent e-mails for completely random, uniformly kind, reasons.

I thought back to that friend of my friend, talking about her experience with cancer and her uncertain prognosis. "This is my death, and no one can share it," she told my friend. I am in nowhere close to such a dire position, but my feelings echo hers:this is my thyroid surgery, these are my myriad biopsies, ... I have to do all this, no one else can do it for me, and even if they could, I wouldn't ask. I'll do it. I will. It is a lonely realization, but it's the brutal truth, and in times like this you must be brutal with yourself.

But in the midst of the numbing loneliness of the long road ahead of me, so many people reaffirmed their connections to me that it was impossible for me not to feel a part of things -- family, friends, community.

For such a bad-news day, I'm feeling paradoxically happy.