New Year

I am not writing this exactly on New Year’s Eve, because my parents, my friends and I are planning to have a little celebration in my hospital room. Nothing fancy you can do here, but we do have a bottle of non-alcoholic cider to pop. And maybe we can catch the fireworks and concerts on TV. In any case, there won’t be a scene of me sitting by myself in my room at midnight, contemplating about life and putting my thoughts into a blog post. But I hope it will still come out authentic enough.

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It’s interesting how a lot of us view this moment when the clock strikes 12AM as a sort of milestone, a time of or for change. We look back at what we have achieved in the past year; then we create a list of resolutions for the upcoming one. I don’t think I have ever had New Year’s resolutions. But this time, I would like to believe that when 2019 comes, things will change for the better. I want to believe that this awful cancer was just part of an awful year, and I can shrug it off when a brand new year arrives.

But what does this moment of December 31, 12AM, really signify? Astronomically, it doesn’t mean anything. The Earth is not in any special position relative to the sun. It’s based on a man-made calendar, so if we all had chosen to use a different calendar, New Year’s Eve would be on a different day entirely. And it is on a different day in the Lunar calendar.

So I don’t believe stars will start aligning in the right way on January 1, causing some positive cosmic energy to flow through me and cure my cancer. Certainly, cancer cells won’t notice a thing when the clock hits 12AM. They’ll just keep doing what they do – multiplying uncontrollably.

Having said that, I would like to keep things positive in this post. At the end of the day (no pun intended), it is New Year’s Eve and we need to celebrate. I especially need some celebration, because since my relapse, there hasn’t been much good news to hold on to.

I do believe in mind over body. So if I keep my mind stress-free and rested, if I keep hoping for the best outcome, no matter how heavily the odds are stacked against me, maybe things will turn around. And I believe that the doctors here at Dana Farber are doing the best they can for me. This new treatment I started on is supposed to be quite different, in the way it works, from what I have received before.

There are internal forces that I hope can make a difference. There are external forces, too. Just not at the cosmic level. But who knows… That’s beyond what my mind can grasp. In any case, I wish that whatever forces there are for you, they will make your 2019 a great year.