My Fortunate Life

I am the world’s most self-absorbed and least charitable person. Well, maybe not. There is always Simon Cowell, so maybe I run a close second.

Like the rest of the world, I have been watching the recent tragedies of Haiti and Chile panning out across my television screen, my web browser, in my radio. So many lives. So many families. It is hard to get your head around the immensity of it, really. But, even in the age of instantly breaking news reaching into our homes as fast as a camera can switch on, it all seems so far away, so abstract compared to our own corner of the world.

Which makes it easier, actually, to become jaded to it. News of this sort comes to us so much more often now; it seems commonplace. I sometimes wonder if equally sad but lesser events—not ones on the scale we have recently witnessed, mind you—have always been this numerous and common, but that we now only know of them because of the speed of the internet and global communication. It seems like there is almost a daily occurrence of some kind that makes the news.

So I, like millions of others (I think, I hope, so as not to seem so singularly aloof), find it just a little easier to take a back seat, a spectator’s position, and not pick up the phone when a telethon, or some other vehicle, is raising money for victims. I watch for a while, watch the millions rack up and the entertainers parade past, and then I move on. My dollars do not move from here to there, do not become a part of those millions of others that so many feel compelled to give. And I seldom wonder why.

I never used to think this way about involvement and responsibility, or the misfortune of others; not even about myself. In fact, I once worked hard toward quite the opposite. I once started a successful food drive when I still lived and worked in Kansas City, one which was viable and raised several tons of food annually for needy families. I used to contribute and work with several organizations that made real differences in peoples’ lives. I did these things because it was rewarding to do so and because I thought it was important for my daughters to see and understand the importance of it.

But at some point, I had to make a decision. Charity had to start at home. Every bit of my time and energy and resources had to go toward them, toward the two most important people in my own life. I knew I was no longer offering the example, or the learning experience, but it was the choice I had to make in order to answer more pressing needs. In the process of withdrawing from that, I must have become desensitized. I became a little closed off to the needs of others, or how I may be able to help with them, even in the smallest ways.

It is a little disturbing to see that in yourself, no matter how you rationalize it. It’s disappointing. I wonder also if it is a byproduct of an experienced life. In our years, do we draw our circle of concern closer to ourselves?

Recently I have had a number of reminders pile up around me—closer to home reminders—that have somewhat shaken my perspective of my own life in relation to others. They are things, old and new and some new only to me, that beg me to rethink the way I see my life and how fortunate it is, or has been.

I used to think my life somewhat unique, a story worth telling. Growing up with, and surviving, a severely bipolar mother (a fact that, until now, was known by very few), traveling the world extensively at a fairly young age, seeing and having done the many things I have in my life—I thought these things set my life apart just a little from all the “normal” lives I saw all around me. I wore it as a badge of courage. I considered myself a survivor. I was still standing, and still (arguably) somewhat normal, even a little accomplished. I won.

But are all those lives all around me really so normal, or so uneventful? I think probably not. By comparison—at least in gravity—my life is at once both pale and fortunate.

Two of my closest friends are fighting off thyroid cancer. One of them received her diagnosis while she was eight months pregnant. From the outside looking in, many people dismiss thyroid cancer as “the best cancer to have” because the successful cure rate is pretty high. But that rate is little comfort in the face of the very word “cancer.” In that one word, for even those of us that have never faced it in any form, lies ominous and fearful feelings. It is still a great unknown in the world of medicine, let alone to the rest of us. Imagine hearing the news that it is in your body. You never expect it. And when you do hear that diagnosis, even in combination with all the statistics that support hope of overcoming your particular form, its presence is, at least, unexpected news, and that leaves you feeling very vulnerable.

Their fight against the “best” cancer is still very difficult. It involves surgery, and radioactive iodine treatments, and time away from loved ones, away from a newborn, and healing, and waiting, and wondering, and lifelong medication. I think it is safe to say that neither of my friends feels fortunate to have their particular kind of cancer. But, I also know both of them to be very strong, and each is showing immense courage and poise in the face of it all. I admire them both, greatly. I wonder how I would fare under the same circumstances.

And when I look around me, their stories are not the only remarkable ones. I have another friend, someone with whom I have only recently reconnected, who has suffered loss in their lifetime beyond anything I could ever fathom. Their courage and strength in the face of those losses seems so incredible, so beyond me, that I feel humbled, and wonder why I ever thought myself a survivor.

There are others. One friend I know has had health problems similar to those I spoke of earlier. Someone else close to me fights daily with bulimia—an affliction rooted so deeply in one’s self-image—despite the fact that they are both intelligent and beautiful, and they have the brightest of futures ahead of them if they can only overcome it. I know a number of people who are either going through, or have been through, family splits that are horrendous, are far more bitter and spiteful and challenging than was mine. One friend had so much more (in material terms) than I ever had, and then, for a time, lived so much harder than I ever have after their family changed. Yet another friend suffered a childhood trauma much, much worse than anything I ever witnessed, but today possesses the strength necessary to be a loving parent in a situation where many of us might not be.

The more I look around me, the more fortunate I begin to feel. I think maybe I just had to open my eyes a little to all those around me to know that. The challenges of my life are very real to me personally, and I suppose we all feel something similar about our own circumstances. It may be only through the lives of others, others close and very real to us, that we learn of life’s bullets we’ve dodged, learn how fortunate we are, or have been. Then, maybe we, when we true up our view, might see our way to reach out, or to do something of value, of real impact, in some form that we feel comfortable.

I still won’t pick up the phone and send money, anonymously combined with millions of other peoples’, to Haiti or Chile. For myself, there still remains a need for the direct connection, the feeling of being close to the cause. So, this June, I run in the Dam to Dam. It’s a 20k run which has, to this point, been a run of fun and personal challenge for me. This year I want to leverage it to do more, so I will be running to also raise awareness for thyroid cancer. It’s the least I can do. But it’s something, and I’m pretty fortunate to be able to do so.

Originally published 3/7/2010.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.