a mystic and a mind: On Courage and Cancer

Sunday, December 7, 2014

On Courage and Cancer

There has been a lot of discussion about courage lately, in the context of protests and policing. One thing that is apparent to me is that police consider themselves to be courageous, and that citizens, whose jobs are perceived to be safe, are not courageous. This is a narrow view.

Ordinary people encounter disease, difficulties, death and loss that require courage and perseverance to survive. Many people display courage every day just getting out of bed and facing their own problems. I have cancer. This has caused me intense pain for long periods of time, along with other dysfunctions. It can be hard to face, and knowing that it is supposed to kill me doesn't help.

Everyone who gets cancer faces a choice. How are they going to handle the disease psychologically? There are two choices. The first choice, and it is probably nearly everyone's approach initially, is to fight the disease. Maintain a positive attitude, search for a cure, believe that you will get better and everything will return to normal. Continue to work as long as possible. Try very hard for things to stay the same, to be the same person.

If you survive, this may be a good choice. If you are likely to be cured, it may also seem a reasonable choice. But, if you do not survive, this choice can lead to a lot of psychological trauma and even a lack of planning. This affects the sick, but also the caregivers and loved ones, who may find themselves unprepared for the event and the changes they will have to make afterwards. I have known people who made this choice and the consequences at the end can be brutal.

The second choice is to accept that you are going to die. This doesn't necessarily mean that you are resigned that the disease is going to kill you, after all, we are all going to die. Acceptance is not easy. Acceptance means a lot more than just telling everyone that you are going to die, it means knowing it completely and deeply. In order to know this on a deep subconscious level, we have to face our fear of death. Fear of death is a part of all of us, and removing it inevitably changes our personality, our outlook, it informs all of our decision making, it will change how you interact with everyone. If you survive, these will be with you the rest of your life, which will then be fully realized

Confronting your fear of death, transcending it and accepting it is the most freeing and empowering thing a person can do. It is also the most courageous thing a person can do. We don't all get the opportunity to make this choice. You may die suddenly or you may make the choice too late. I've been blessed to make this change and to have had the opportunity.

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The Self-Aware Universe

In the beginning, there was only energy. But it was energy so dense that it was denser than “matter.” This energy of infinite density started expanding, and in doing so, some of the energy “condensed” into matter. Matter attracts gravity. More matter attracts more gravity, and more matter. When a large enough mass of matter accumulates, it can condense to form a star. If the mass is large enough, nuclear reactions will begin and the stars produce energy, largely in the form of light. Now, the universe is illuminated.

The universe is now lit up, but it is still not very complex, especially in terms of chemistry. After the big bang, matter consists largely of hydrogen and helium, with only tiny amounts of a couple of other elements. This makes for boring chemistry, there only two elements, one is inert. The hydrogen can only form one compound, H₂.

Besides producing a lot of energy, stars also produce new elements. While small stars only produce elements up to carbon, the large stars can produce all of the elements in the periodic table. These elements are produced and dispersed when these large stars go supernova. These really large stars also don’t shine for very long, the largest will burn out in only 10 million years, or even less. Thus, for every billion years, there are hundreds of generations of supernovae seeding the universe with chemical elements.

Eventually, some of these elements recombine, by gravity, and form planets and stars. In a star, these elements don’t do much; stars are too hot for chemistry. But on a planet things can happen, if conditions are right. The temperature must be right. If it is too hot, large molecules are not stable and will decompose. If it is too cold, there is no molecular motion, and too little energy. Without molecular motion chemistry cannot occur, or will occur very slowly.

Out of all those elements in the periodic table, one stands out for its complex chemistry. That element is carbon. Carbon is the most moderate of elements, exactly in the middle of the table where it only wants to share electrons. Carbon wants to share electrons so much that it even combines with itself. One of these pure carbon substances is diamond, the hardest and most refractory material known. This is reflective of the strength of the C─C bond.

These strong C─C bonds make the backbone for large, complex molecules. When molecules become large, they have the potential to store information. Eventually, a molecule that could store large amounts of information developed. This molecule became so large that it could encode the universe. The universe now has a memory.

Retained information allows more complexity to develop, but retention of information requires energy, hence chemosynthesis developed, and much later, photosynthesis. The ability to utilize energy increases complexity.

Sensory systems develop out of a need to interact with the environment as an energy source. Eventually, observation and interaction with the environment allows for the possibility of manipulating the environment. Manipulating the environment requires intelligence. Eventually, through increasing complexity, life develops to ability to be self aware.

The Universe, through its own processes and laws, developed within itself the capacity of awareness. The Universe is now alive, it can now observe itself. We think of evolution as strictly a biological process, but biological evolution was only a portion of this process. Chemical evolution had to occur before that, and nuclear evolution first. All of it had to happen the way it did for us to be here. We are intimately connected to all of it, to all other forms of life, to the rocks, and the planet, and the solar system. The signatures of these processes are in our DNA, our chemical composition and our nuclear (isotopic) composition. We are from here.

We tend to think of ourselves as the end of this process, but where would it go from here if allowed to continue? What would be the ultimate expression of evolutionary advancement? What if that is a being that has the ability to closely observe and deeply understand the universe while at the same time being in a constant state of amazement and awe about the fact that this actually happened, and that they are privileged be alive? A being that understands the close relationship with everything else we see. We all came from the same place; we are all a result of amazing events that actually happened. What would it be like to live that way? What if you felt that deep connection and understanding all the time.