Lest they be so rare they're ignored

There's lots to think about lately. Conference was real good. Life is pretty good. Alex and Nicole have a new little one (relatively). We are mostly as healthy and as happy as we let ourselves be. A year and a few months ago when we first heard the C word, I thought that life would be changed forever, and things were quite different for many weeks and months. Of course events like surgery and a life of Dr's, Nurses and tests made life very different and sometimes difficult. Through all this I thought I would have real opportunities to grow in ways and directions that I knew I needed.

Yet as time moved us through these events I began to fear a thing that I was beginning to see, sometimes with great clarity. In the midst of so many different events and new experiences and unique opportunities, I wasn't changing or growing in ways that I thought I should. Now a year older and maybe only a little wiser, I realize that the times and things we live through can be looked at very simply. They are an opportunity to: 1. Keep learning or not. (learning requires hard work). 2. Time goes on minute by minute without exception. 3. Maybe most important of all, we don't change because of external events. Important personal changes come about slowly and only through great and consistent effort.

So what's new? A new grandchild, a realization that people are basically good and if we relate to them in a positive good way we will usually get that back from them, a realization that life is what we make it and that events are not the important things, It's what we do about those events that matters. I wonder what the world would be like if all people could learn to identify themselves not by or because of events in their lives (victims?) but by their desires, actions, and goals, (we are, if we look honestly a conglomerate of mostly good with a few little bad things mixed in).

One thought about personal identity, we need to take a close look at what we identify ourselves to be. What is our personal private PROFILE (a short definition of who we are)? I hope we know ourselves well. Do we like that profile? Is there anything we can do to change it for the better? I'm still trying to decide if I'm being a victim of cancer or a person just reacting the way people do to things like cancer and that in the end I'll come out of this OK. I wish everyone the best in their personal challenges and trials and hope you'll be patient with me in mine.