Survival is Not Passive

After having a bone marrow transplant and fighting for 4 years with only a 30 % chance to live a few things became clear. 

First and foremost we have a choice on how we react to our situation. Take for instance the famous Math genius John Nash. Even though he was mentally ill with schizophrenia and depression he worked with his mind and went on to live a fairly normal life. He was not passive on his diagnosis or his minds situation.

After my diagnosis I could see early on that my mind was more of an illness than the actual diagnosis. What I mean by this is early on I was poor me, why me? a normal thought process. However there is a whole other world in the process of thought. Where ever your mind is at is where you are at.  You have a choice on how you react to your situation. If I think in my mind poor me, then I can be nothing else but poor me. If I think this sucks then nothing else can happen but a life that sucks. 

My doctor told me years later (an esteemed oncologist) that "only 20% of what we do here is healing, we have patients that have a 90% survival rate and when they feel sorry for themselves or have the poor me's, they die.” The key here is understanding survival and its relationship to the mind. 

Survival is not a passive undertaking. A good metaphor is the castaway.  Each day adrift and lost at sea if we do not wake and start our work of collecting water, food, and shelter we will die. While lost at sea part of the work is keeping the mind in a healthy space.  

Survival is work. The mind is the same. Each day we must partake and be active and be aware of it and choose how to navigate its direction. Choose on how we react to being lost at sea. The mind is not a passive pursuit. I know for sure if I would have stuck to my early thought pattern of poor me, I would have been dead years ago. Im sure John Nash would have said the same. We have to be engaged everyday in what I will call watching the mind, meditation.