In October 2013, I am hosting an exploration of liiving a passionate life. On Day 2, we look at choosing your attitude via a conversation with my daughter and mother.
My sixteen-year-old daughter, Emma, was frustrated with me
last night. My car has a phone which makes everyone a member of the
conversation. My Mom called and I said, “Mom, great news! I don’t have melanoma
again!” to which she responded, “Oh, Julie, that’s great!”
Considering I hadn’t even told her I had a biopsy last week I found this more than slightly surprising.
“Yes, it is great even though I don’t have melanoma again, I do have basal cell happier to have basal cell than melanoma!”
happier to have basal cell than melanoma!”
We went on to talk about how we were celebrating and on and on and it turns out Emma was seething in the back seat. This morning she told me with an angry face,
It is easier to choose a passionate attitude when life is going exactly as planned. Last Spring with Emma and Katherine (Emma on the right).
“I was so mad at you guys. You have cancer – you shouldn’t
celebrate, this is going to be awful again.”
She even said the color of the ribbon for melanoma was black and that wasn’t even a fun color to wear, to which I quipped, “Basal Cell Carcinoma is so harmless, they don’t even have a ribbon.”
Suddenly, Emma didn’t mind our celebrating and she understood why we were jumping up and down with glee over the news.
This is how it is a lot when we “lose” our passion.
It isn’t that your passion has disappeared or is no longer functional, it is that you have chosen to look at life as if your passion doesn’t exist.
What if you shifted gears and looked through life’s veil differently.
A year ago I wouldn’t have understood about the different variety of skin cancers.
Now that I have lived the journey of melanoma survivor, I am able to make light of it not because it isn’t serious, it is because I am choosing to look through life with a different attitude. I’m a melanoma thriver, not survivor. My heart hurts for those who have had melanoma and weren’t so blessed.
I hear it regularly, after all, because when you have something like cancer, everyone tells you their worst case scenario stories.
These folks don’t mean to be passion killers and it is up to us, people who are devoted to leading a passionate life to be passionate even and especially when it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world.
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I was so excited to find this challenge, #31Days hosted by The Nester. You still have a couple days to join. I'm doing the "Personal Endeavor" category with a whole bunch of other cool people.
Consider spending a part of your October with us!
Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her
word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown
Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different
social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
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© 2013
