Unique

What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!

Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.

–Margaret Mead

On Twitter this week, this caught my eye. It’s from the Parisian surgeon Olivier Branford whose tweets I enjoy enormously.

For a while, I rather enjoy some routine. It’s great to know where the good snow is on a mountain. To know that you’re likely to find lift next to the ridge. To know that it’s Friday night and you’re playing tennis and doing dinner afterwards. Routine can be nice.

But we can become so mired in our routines that we forget there’s a big world out there. We lose our spontaneity. And then the routine becomes a deepening rut.

I remember being at Ashland the year I was on the road with Whiskey Oscar. I was lucky enough to get a standing room only spot in the back of the theatre, and then after intermission a front row seat! The performance was Macbeth and it was stunning.

At intermission, I sat on a stone wall and watched the crowd. I felt like I knew who all these people were, without having ever met them. They all moved in a certain way; said the appropriate thing; played their small role in a social medley without a flaw.

It was a perfect ordinary event, but it gave me an eerie feeling. I felt as though I was watching a dance and everyone wore a mask. The mask –a combination of clothes and mannerisms, musts and must nots–tightly defined them. I just watched, feeling very disconnected on the one hand, but also very connected to a deep sense the familiarity of the scene. I’d been there so many times in my life. But now I seemed to look in from some other place. I had no routine or mask to define my presence.

Once again, I feel like I’m looking at a life, but this time it’s mine. It’s like watching a slow motion crash. It’s almost an out of body experience as I do the tasks I must do to sell the house; to pack; to say goodby to my beloved Chanel. This can’t be happening; I don’t want to be #HomelessWithCancer, even on an adventure. But events are now beyond my control. The only control I have is to let go.