Talking to my friends and parents at the hospital this week reminded me of the basic goodness that transcends all current circumstances.
Day 3.5 of the first round of chemo is done and dusted. I have one more full day tomorrow and then a half day on Sunday when I will also finally be discharged.
My doctors have been very happy with me and at the end of this day I am once more grateful to report that I remain free of side effects.
I will admit I did eat less of my dinner today, but that had less to do with the medically assigned poison killing my appetite and more with the fact that you inevitably start to tire of the food the longer you stay in hospital. I have praised the food quality here, and I maintain that praise – but after what feels like the hundreth serving of soup even the most well-balanced, poised mind will be tempted to cry out “Oh for heaven’s sake just bring me a pizza!”
My situation was perhaps not helped by the fact that just before my dinner was served, I was texting my mother who is going to an excellent local restaurant with my father this evening. And since I actually still feel fine, I started daydreaming about the wonderful dishes I like to order there. Dreams are fine as dreams, but become overly attached to them and watch the arrival of a beige hospital tray bring you back down to reality in a most disappointing way.
But all things considered these are of course very privileged things to be annoyed about.
The thing I want to end today’s post on, however, is the invaluable role visitors played for me this week. From Wednesday, I saw at least one person every day. And whenever they showed up and we sat down and talked about whatever came to mind, it was almost like the hospital around us vanished into thin air.
I use the verb “love” generously when it comes to my friends, but I genuinely am in a certain way besotted with each of them in their own unique ways. Their intelligence, empathy, and kindness is humbling to witness and each one of them inspires me in their own different ways.
In Buddhism, there is the concept of the “fourth time”. The time beyond past, present, and future, where everything that could ever happen already happened, is constantly happening, and at the same time never happens. In the fourth time, all sentient beings are already Buddhas (awakened ones) without ever having been anything else.
I am bringing this up because each conversation I had this week felt to me like it took place in this fourth time. Not in the present, with me hooked up to my poisonous friend Perry (yes of course I gave my IV pole a name), but also not in some static version of the past, before my cancer diagnosis, or some imagined future where everything has already worked itself out.
No, talking to my friends made me feel a connection to something much more pervasive, something immutable that is with us constantly, whether we recognise it or not. Something we don’t have to strive for, labour for, yearn for. Because it is our innermost nature itself. It is already complete and perfect, right here, right now.
With that in mind, I wish to end today by quoting H.E. Garchen Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who gave me my refuge vows back in 2023:
Love is the cause of happiness.
Protect it with patience.
My friends, I wish you happiness and health wherever you are. Until next time!
just thoughts 