surviving cancer 101: lesson 4

63

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

excerpted from the Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

4. the importance of structure

Try to find some small thing in your life you can do every day that makes sense. For me, it is crosswords. Puzzles provide structure and order to my universe, and are a way to feel challenged, and maybe have a laugh. Concentrating on them takes me away from the uncertainties that characterize my own life. 


Its nice to have a tiny little box of structure, which can be solved each and every day. They are as unlike my own life as can be - I do not control my disease, and the decisions that we've had to make have been difficult, and we, of course, can't know whether they have been, are, or will be the right ones. I just have to trust them. I cannot solve my disease, or even understand why I have it, but for some reason the act of solving a puzzle every day is comforting.