The heart is a muscle
Newsletter #11 | November 2023
Friendship, fatherhood and family
As those of you who read this newsletter regularly will know, I’m a big fan of 80s movies; in particular the films of John Hughes and Christopher Columbus.
In fact, it’s possible my entire worldview and moral framework is a pieced together patchwork of lessons learned from Ferris Beulller (friendship), Mrs Doubtfire (fatherhood) and Home Alone (family).
My guilty pleasure is those big mindless superhero movies; chewing gum for the brain. Guardians of the Galaxy (friendship), Spiderman (fatherhood) and The Incredibles (family).
But by far my favourite films are the ones that make me cry: It’s a wonderful life (family); Withnail and I (friendship); Life is Beautiful (fatherhood).
(Are there some underlying themes emerging here?)
In the last of these, a Jewish-Italian father shields his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi Concentration Camp by reframing the experience as a game. The goal? Get to the end. The prize? A tank.
It’s a sentimental story about the power of positivity to reframe reality and offer hope amidst horror.
Reframing
As those of you who read this newsletter regularly may not know, I have had to do a lot of reframing myself over the past 20 months.
Whilst I have not been living through a holocaust, I am on the sidelines of a terrifying invasion.
In March 2022, my wife of 13 years and partner since I was 25 was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. She was 42.
In the intervening months, she has undergone 16 rounds of chemotherapy, heavy dose radiotherapy, targeted therapy and liver surgery. But it hasn’t worked. Still the cancer is there. And it continues to spread and grow. The NHS have deemed her incurable and inoperable.
What astounds me about this situation and why I share it with you in this newsletter is her response to it.
This is a woman who at one point or another in the last year and a half has lost her weight, her hair, her job, her purpose, half her liver and most of the feeling in her hands and feet.
But she has never lost her hope. Nor her determination. She hasn’t given up.
In September, with only one limited NHS disease-management option left, she decided to pause the toxic treatments and travel to Mexico for a month and try a different approach to healing. Our friend Emma set up a Go Fund Me page and so far over 800 people have donated more than £60,000 to support her ongoing recovery.
We won’t know the impact of this new approach for some months yet, as she continues to self-administer the new regime from home.
But she shows me every day that how we think becomes what we think. What we think becomes what we do. And what we do can inspire others to miraculously selfless acts.
The heart is a muscle
My wife’s world view teaches me that reframing is not denial. Her diagnosis makes us angry. And scared. And sad. And those feelings need space to happen. They are essential messengers telling us that this life, this person, matters a great deal.
Instead, she has mastered the art of pragmatic idealism: accepting reality but responding only positively and constructively.
We cannot control what happens to us. Or what we feel about it. Only how we respond.
Do we acquiesce to despair or do we fight to keep hope alive?
After all, life intruding on life is life. The obstacle is the way because it has to be. To love is to suffer. But I am slowly learning that ‘I can’t cope’ can become ‘I will face today with courage.’
Look at it one way and a heart is there to be broken.
But view it from another angle, reframe it, and the heart is a muscle.
And if that’s the case, then I want to make it strong.
