Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving. I am thankful to have you, the readers of I Have Serious News. I am particularly grateful for those who comment, have written to me, or called me to offer support or discuss their suffering. We are companions and sojourners, and I want to explain why that matters.
If the last paragraph sounds like a conventional Thanksgiving piety, I offer no apology. I’d rather be trite than ungrateful. Yet my thanks are sincere because you are helping me solve two problems.
The first problem is that cancer is painful and exhausting. When you have a terminal prognosis, there are reasons for terror but not many for hope. There is overwhelming data that personal relationships have powerful effects on physical and mental health. People die of emotional starvation.
Fortunately, my family and in-laws are large, tight, and highly supportive, and many lifelong friends have rushed to my side. But the warm support of the “I Have Serious News” has also helped, and I am immensely grateful.
Here’s the second problem. I used to have a focused, disciplined life; cancer demolished it. I was a scientist with the mission to understand why the health care system fails so badly in getting mental health care to children and adolescents. I led teams analyzing vast data sets to understand where and why things broke down.
Then, a tumour broke through the tissue in my throat, and I began coughing blood. I got an oropharyngeal cancer diagnosis at 3:00 AM in an Emergency Department. Radiation treatment followed, but without benefit. A surgeon gave me “months, not years.” I’ve outlived that prognosis, but my career hasn’t
So, what is my mission now? Cancer pulled me off the podiums where I lectured and thrust me into exam rooms with doctors and nurses, a living room with family, or maybe just my dog.
My new mission is to love, serve, accept my dependent need for care, and give care when possible. But how do you love or serve when you’ve got pain but not much time? Specifically, I have been writing about cancer. How does that serve the mission?
The discipline of writing helps me think clearly. However, that explains why I am writing. It doesn’t explain why I am publishing this. People tell me my writing helps them, and I am glad. However, it also helps me when you read what I write. Why is that?
Let’s begin with how my goals have changed. I used to be able to tell you what I was doing precisely: “We will submit our research funding proposal to the Canadian government on November 1st.” In my old life, I was good at bending the world to my will to get things done on deadline.
In my new life, I’m committed “to love, to serve, and to give and receive care,” which means letting others bend me. However, the ‘love/serve/care’ mission is vague: serve whom, when, and how? I need to refine my ability to see what people need and how they want to be treated.
Why do I need help with this? Because to hit my deadlines in the old life, I didn’t have time for my problems or yours. Tunnel vision was my friend; the most efficient way to ignore a problem is never to see it. My mission now is to transform myself by opening my eyes.
To be responsive, we need access to others’ interior lives and to our own.
What do I mean by interior life? I mean what we see, hear, and feel; how we reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and motivations; our intuitions and drives, moral and otherwise. In short, the infinite richness of our private worlds.
I didn’t know how impoverished my old life was. The world is more than matter in motion; our interior lives contain much of the universe’s beauty, light, and suffering. I have no direct access to your interior life, and neither can you perfectly understand me.
But we can do better in relationships of trust and mutual recognition. I do not mean recognition in the sense of honours or social media likes. I mean being seen for who I am, including what I need. And seeing you for who you are, what you need, and why you matter.
The first step in seeing who you are and why you matter is that I attend to you. Attending means not just “Where do I point my eyes?” but also, “Do I see, feel, and believe that you have an interior life that is as real as mine?”
Is this our everyday experience? People are largely hidden from us, and we fear to approach them. Seeing you may require that I get past a focus on my situation and a willingness to look at yours, a look that I might resist because acknowledging your needs might obligate me to act. So, I blind myself, spending my time in intentional distraction.
What’s needed, Iris Murdoch argued, is that we look at the world with a “just and loving gaze.” The gaze is just in that I believe that your interior life is as real as mine and that your affliction matters as much as mine. And in a loving gaze, the energy that recognizing your affliction generates in me pulls me toward you in care rather than pushing me away.
Finally, how does writing help me achieve a “just and loving gaze”? Three ways. First, I am writing to clarify my path; for example, it’s by writing about Weil and Murdoch that I’ve understood how moral vision supports love and care.
Second, good writing begins with seeing what matters. Writing these essays builds skills in reading my interior life and those around me. Publishing them makes me accountable; you’ll catch it if I’m faking sincerity.
Finally, I Have Serious News is becoming a small community. Those of you who have been here a while are coming to know me.
I’ve learned much from some of the frequent commenters. I particularly appreciate those who have written or contacted me by telephone or Zoom. I am grateful because these conversations have been about you as much as me; remember, I want to recognize and strengthen your interior life.
We are building a small community of attention and mutual recognition here, sharing our interior lives and speaking honestly about what we need and the challenges we face.
Thank you.
>We are building a small community of *attention* and mutual recognition here
Simone Weil, “attention consists of suspending thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired.”
I regret not getting to know you better when we were family. I regret how I broke away from the family. I'm glad I have the opportunity to get to know you now through I have serious news. Your messages are so sincere and honest and I thank you for teaching me a thing or two on life and reminding me how I should look at life. As always, I'm keeping you in my prayers.