Revised "About Me"

My "About Me" used to start with the words "I have mantle cell lymphoma"... and at the time I thought it was a good introduction. But it was sitting in the subconscious for a time and apparently the censors and editors were hard at work because I found the following in my mental inbox as the revision.

About me. As I mentioned, I had begun this introduction before with an introduction of another warrior facing MCL. And those words rang true. I felt that it was exactly true, exactly right. As has happened throughout my life, I was to stand corrected – this time by my own ‘self.’ As I mentioned, in the back of my mind, on that smallest burner of the stove, what I had decided to say “about me” was simmering away and becoming something that I could really serve up and say was an accurate reflection of who I am.

I love the Shelby Supercars Ultimate Aero. It claims the distinction of ‘World’s Fastest Production Car’ and I think the Cobalt Blue color option would best fit with my skin tone. But the fact that it is the ‘World’s Fastest Production Car’ doesn’t tell you what it is. And that is the problem I ran into with my previous introduction because ‘mantle cell lymphoma’ does not give any more credit where credit is due than the title claimed by that car. In the car’s case, it doesn’t tell you how it came to be the title holder. In my case, it undoes who I am and makes my title ‘guy with mantle cell lymphoma.’

I said credit where credit is due. And where is credit due? I believe that having a cancer causes a person to think in ways that many don’t bother to. And I would have, before knowing I had this cancer, erroneously said that it isn’t really necessary to think in those ways. That is, why think about what has brought you to where you are and shaped you into who you are? Why care about what you did today? What value is it to consider the worth of those things and people and ideas that surround you?

But certain events change you. I thought I had a good grasp on that before – I’ve been in the helpless position of watching a friend die of injuries which I might only have been able to help if I’d been a surgeon, I’ve been involved with children that were victims of abuse that I would not believe possible for another human to inflict or of a child to be able to sustain, I’ve been part of the decision-making process that provided the order for others to carry out acts resulting in the deaths of other human beings, I’ve been a stranger telling someone that their loved one would not be coming home. I’ve also been the one standing in the right place to rescue a drowning person at the beach, and to help a veterinarian with a complicated horse birth, and to have been told by someone I hardly knew that something I didn’t even realize I’d said completely changed who they became. I’m not saying anything that is unique to me – nobody lives in a vacuum and nobody lacks similar experiences. But I can say that I didn’t ever really think about much more than what do I need to get done around the house, what do I need to get done at work this week, and what am I going to do with my family on my next days off. Stuff like that. I never reflected much on life which, most importantly, meant that I never truly appreciated the people, places, ideas and things that filled it.

Which really ends up being the answer to the ‘Who am I’ of this introduction. Who I am is defined by those people, places, ideas and things that have thus far filled my life – same as everyone else. I’m not the guy with MCL – I’m the guy in that song “Who Am I” by the Casting Crows that continues to struggle with religious ideas but found out that I could still be a believer and draw from that faith in spite of myself, I’m the guy whose pre-kindergarten friend Garvey taught him that there is no value to evaluating a person on any basis other than how they are as a person, I’m the guy whose parents taught him how to live on little and then with more, I’m the guy who was afforded extraordinarily unique opportunities in education, in service to my Country, and in careers. I’m the guy who found his one true love, married her and in the process gained a family whose end of generosity and kindness seems to have no limit. These are but a few significant examples of those defining things.

So, yes, one of the latest defining moments has been a diagnosis of MCL. But to describe myself in some sort of biography just doesn’t seem interesting to me, I’d bore you before we got to my fourth birthday. Like that Shelby Supercars Ultimate Aero that captures my imagination – who I am isn’t even about “me,” it’s about all the experiences, memories and people of my life. Those are the engineers who created the parts that together make me.