Discourse

I had a recent and brief exchange with my uncle after a recent post about life, its potential pointlessness, and the struggle to find meaning.

(Chris)
Interesting ruminations!  I think that Tolstoy’s outlook is pretty pessimistic. I believe that life has a purpose, but I don’t necessarily
believe that your illness has anything to do with it.  Your purpose may be to help someone later in life, maybe to have kids, work with people experiencing poverty, invent, write, or draw something important. Maybe this three-year period is just a detour that has nothing to do with that.  I don’t know!!!
much love,

(Jeremiah)
His outlook certainly was pessimistic… but I feel that was the impetus for his spiritual pursuits/awakening. He had to fall into that place of despair to arrive. I guess, the way I look at it, I was already en route to these things; in my last semester of grad school, I was going through interviews with the Peace Corps to work (with people with low incomes, perhaps) in Albania. I was writing … I was drawing. I think that a detour that goes on for three years is a bit excessive. It isn’t the physical journey but that of the mind, psyche, etc. As I have written, the toll that all this has taken is very significant. Yes, my oncologist can say, “You look great!”
But he doesn’t see the damage on the inside. Of course, his objective is to treat the patient, so externally, I look “great.” I don’t know where I am going with this. I do that this illness, and the longevity of it, MUST have something to do with it / with life. I have to think like this; otherwise, what’s the point? If all my struggling physically and psychologically was all for naught … I can’t go that route in thinking… I spiral out of control… 

Chris
Naturally, everything we go through leads us to be who we are at any moment.  So you are, and will be, a very different person than you would have been had you not gotten cancer.  But that doesn’t mean (in my mind) that it is directly related to your purpose in life.