chasing life...

I have a habit of watching tv shows aimed at a target audience 10-20 years younger than myself. I used to be able to blame it on working with college students, but I'm not sure I can even use that excuse anymore. 

If you haven't seen it, Chasing Life is a new show on ABC Family that follows April Carver as she is diagnosed with, and deals with leukemia. She spent most of the first eight episodes in denial, before she comes to a point of confrontation this week. April works for a Boston newspaper and the day before she starts chemo, she wrote a piece about a gubernatorial candidate walking out of a debate to check on his son who has brain cancer.

"As I watched Bruce Hendrie at the debate the other night, I didn't see a wealthy businessman or a candidate seeking office standing before me. I saw a father and I recognized that look in his eyes, that terrible fear because I've seen that same fear in my own mother's eyes, and my grandma's eyes, and my baby sister eyes, because I have cancer too.  And let me tell you, it’s a bitch. And it’s an equal opportunity offender. No amount of money in the world, no amount of privilege, can make you exempt. Look at Leo Hendrie. And when it chooses you, you’re suddenly thrust into a club that you didn’t ask to join. You’re shipped off to war even though you never enlisted in the army. But you have to put on your armour anyway, and know that if you’re lucky, you’ll discover new sides of yourself, Like a will you never knew you had. And you’ll get to see new sides of the people who matter the most to you in the world, as they rap you in their love and lend you their strength when yours is running low. And then you go off and you fight. You fight like hell. Because, really, what other choice do you have?" - April Carver

There's a lot I can pull out of this especially after knowing way too many people who have fought cancer (let's be honest.. knowing one person is one too many). It bothers me that it takes cancer (or other hard times) to see new sides of the people who matter the most to you in the world. Sometimes the bad comes out in people and you wish that it never came to this… but so often the bad… the cancer, the divorce, the death… brings out the best in the best people. I wish it didn't take the bad to bring out the good. 

I could never wish any of the bad on anyone… but I wonder what you might say… how you might act if a situation was more dire. 

Would you get over the grudge faster? Would you love bigger? Would you give more? Would you take a leap of faith sooner? 

Don't wait for the bad to be the best you can be.