Wisdom

Quotations we’ve found helpful

• “Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware.” --Martin Buber
  
  
• "Change is very hard and we change only when the pain of same is greater than the pain of change." --Dave Ramsey
  
  
• “Survivorship, quite simply, begins when you are told you have cancer and continues for the rest of your life.” --Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D.
  
  
• “Successful survivorship does not need to equate to ‘cure’. Healing is possible even when a cure is not.” --Michael Lerner, Ph.D.
  
  
• “I encourage my patients to have faith in God but not to expect Him (Her) to do all the work.” --Dr. Bernie Siegel, Love, Medicine and Miracles
  
  
• “Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind supports the body too.” -- John Armstrong

My friend Vinny, whose blog inspired this one, recently got the news that a lump on his lung was a metastasized teratoma, which in this case is considered good news because it is pre-cancerous. It was removed and they’re feeling better, but recurrence is always a possibility. On his blog he quotes Calvin Trillin, who wrote of his wife, Alice, who died of complications from radiation:

[T]he meaure of how you held up in the face of a life-threatening illness was not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your own identity.

One of my favorite quotes is:
“When the dog is chasing you, turn around and whistle for it.” --Henry David Thoreau

I’m learning to whistle.