Man's Search for Meaning, Part 3

I didn’t write a blog yesterday. I tried to, but I was a week late in doing my Safety Training Videos for school so I sat up until 11:30pm watching wonderful vignettes on Blood Born Pathogens and Sexual Harassment. Nothing like having Stage 4 Cancer and watching School Shooter Videos! I reminded myself that the purpose of beating cancer is to be able to participate in life. Sometimes life is fun and exciting! And sometimes it’s learning about OSHA safety standards.

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“…each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

-Man’s Search for Meaning.

I read that line in the pool of my apartment complex on Sunday. It seemed ironic- to be in a pool on an 85 degree September day, reading a book about finding meaning in life during the Holocaust, but there I was.

I put the book down after I read that sentence and proceeded to bicycle kick my legs in the pool. At first I worried that being in a pool was a sign that life wasn’t asking too much of me. My mind wandered to the people who lost everything in Bermuda. To victims of last year’s wild fires in California. There are families risking everything walking through Mexico to the United States in the faint hope of a better life. Or what about the people in the concentration camps Dr. Frankl was writing about.

I left the step I was sitting on and swam underwater for the whole link of the pool. I was happy my lungs let me get from one side to the other with only one breath. As I popped my head above the surface, another thought occurred to me:

Maybe my being in this pool was a sign that I was answering life’s questions fairly well.

Who would blame me for lying on my couch depressed? Who would think twice about me wallowing in lament or feeling sorry for myself? Not only because of the cancer, but for the fact that the Cubs has lost five straight one run games! I had every excuse to be miserable!

But no. I was in a freaking pool! Reading a book on psychology! Not even letting looming prospect of School Safety videos get me down.

I inhaled as deeply as I could. I still couldn’t fill my lungs all the way, but it was better than in March. I submerged myself in the water, pushed off from the wall, and didn’t come up again until I reached the other side.