How
come every time we hear about someone getting cancer it’s usually framed under
the  “courageous battle they’re
fighting” banner? How are you being courageous simply by being diagnosed with a
disease? The fact that you are searching for a cure and trying to remain
positive while under dire circumstances isn’t called courageous, it’s called
not dead yet. Sounds to me more like common sense!

You
really don’t have a whole heck of a lot of options do you? Outside of joining
the French foreign legion there really isn’t anything courageous to do while you’re trying to get healed! Courageous is
the wrong word I think. Hope and persistence in seeking a cure is the more
accurate term I would guess and the only admirable trait is you don’t commit
suicide before it arrives but instead are optimistic about a positive outcome.

Cancer
like other residues of the fall is a disease. For some it will become terminal.
But the truth of life is the moment you are conceived you are terminal. You are
stricken with the ultimate killer disease that is never cured, mortality. The
truth is if we admit it to ourselves is this courageous battle thing is
actually the rest of us thinking if we praise the one with cancer maybe we won’t get it.

We
feel sorry for cancer victims and think heaping accolades on them somehow make
the rest of us invulnerable to it happening to us. The truth is every day you
are alive is one day closer to you being dead. It seems if we all saw life as a
terminal illness it would actually give us as humans the truth perspective we
could all live by.

So if
being told we’re dying is courageous, and since we are all dying then aren’t we
all potentially leading courageous lives. That is if courage means not quitting
or it means always seeking the winning outcome to a game that is already
rigged.

Faith
to me is courageous. I don’t see God like I see humans. I don’t communicate,
understand or feel completely at ease with the way God interacts in my life. I
am told by my faith to HAVE faith in God in order to please Him. As a matter of
fact faith is the only way to please
God by His own words.

Just
in case there is anyone out there that believes I’m being insensitive to people
with cancer I should inform you my dad died of it. The cancer that ate his
brain and killed an otherwise healthy man of 59 who was gone within 6 months of
diagnosis was cruel and evil and horrific. It robbed him of his speech, motors-kills
and ability to communicate.

I
hate cancer. But it is real. Death is real. Dying is real and there is nothing
particularly courageous about it since we don’t have a choice to avoid it.
Courage is throwing yourself on a grenade to save your squad when you didn’t
have too. Dying for others when you could have survived is courageous. Death is
handed to us whether we like it or not. Death is leaving this earth too soon
without your consent.

It’s
coming though. Everyone reading this will be dead within a hundred years. True
courage comes with how you live your life to inspire others. How you die is an
extension of this and can be inspiring as well but how you die isn’t your
choice. It is thrust upon you. If you have lived well the dying is a comfort, a
reward for completing the journey. In my opinion dying isn’t courageous…living
is.