Cancer 51

I suppose reaching fifty blogs on the subject of cancer is something of a milestone. I have had quite a few positive comments so I must be doing something right. I am probably repeating myself at times but I don’t care, the blog is more about a stream of consciousness than an attempt to write a logically constructed account of the process of living with and dying from cancer. It is the same with grammar and spelling. I don’t tend to go back and review or revise anything that I am writing. You get it as it is. I should perhaps do more research when I start blathering about books or people but I can’t be bothered. I am not attempting to write a logically constructed and empirically informed account of the process of living with and dying from cancer. If there are errors then blame my comprehensive school education.

I have written about, and I think about, the meaning of life. As I have said before, I see life as essentially meaningless. Any meaning attached to life is the meaning you as an individual attach to it, whether that relates to relationships with others, the acquisition of knowledge, admiring natural beauty, or even believing in fairy stories about a badly dressed beard god sitting on a cloud called heaven. That is all there is, and once you are dead those meanings die with you. That is not to say some of these meanings are not shared between many members of the human race. I have no empirical evidence (see above), but I suspect that if you ask everyone in the world about what meaning their lives have, most would mention relationships with others. It is probably top of the list.

While I like to think of myself as a – usually – reasonably kind and nice person (apologies for the ego) there is a part of me, especially now, that is incredibly selfish. I want to live. I want to be alive. I want to breathe. I want to be in my home. I want to travel to places. I want to smell grass. I want to smell cattle shit. I want to listen to birds and insects. I want to be with other people. I want to sit in the dappled sunshine under a tree. Me, me, me. It is all about me, not you.

Nevertheless there is also the selfless element. I don’t want to upset people. I want them to be happy. I want them to get on with whatever they want to get on with. If they have a relationship with me I want them to continue with it. So truthfully it is not just me, it is you too.

But on the scale of things this is all meaningless. In the end none of it matters. In 100 years we will all be dead. We will all be forgotten, so what if I am dead this year or in 30 years? It makes no difference in the end.