But now, taking care of my body is literally a matter of life or death. My health all of a sudden isn’t on the back burner, and it seems threatened by every choice I make (to exercise or not, to eat well and sleep well or not, to run myself to the ground or not) and everything that’s out of my control (the polluted environment, the unsafe food, my genes, and uh, whether the science of medicine keeps advancing, etc).

And with almost zero work I’m suddenly at a loss with life. Thus the big question on finding a balance in life. I thought and thought and thought, and remained baffled.

In all honesty I don’t have that much time. The hospital runs – sometimes four trips a week – are keeping me pretty busy. What’s supposed to be a quick one-hour errand sometimes turns into a half-day adventure as a result of the long lines, inefficient hospital management or some mistakes on my end.

Still, there’s some free time to be had with the temporary absence from work -- time to read, time to walk and time to rest. Such extra time -- and such flexible time -- is what makes me antsy. Oddly, I want to work. Somehow work gives life a bit more purpose, gives people a sense of productivity, and most of all, a sense of normalcy. You may think this stupid and ridiculous, and that this is just one more example of how people are lost in the modern society, missing the meaning of life and blah, blah. But if one day you step into my situation, I think you’ll know what I'm saying.

“What about start doing things that you’ve always wanted to do and never had time to?” a friend asked me on the phone.

Ever since I started working, I’ve dreamed of taking a few months off – even if it’s just one month – to just travel, hike and read (and eat and sleep, of course). Also, there’s that remote dream of learning how to play the piano and picking up one or two more languages.

But those things don’t work that well right now, I told my friend. When you are healthy and take time off to read and travel and hike, that’s a vacation. When you are not healthy, it’s just some purposeless things you do temporarily while you wait for the real life. When you’ve put in a long day at work and slip under your sheets to read a book you love, that’s precious time you reward yourself with. When you read a book during a day that’s entirely idle because you are not feeling well, that’s passing time until your body recoups its energy.

Plus when you are constantly feel tired, sick and all the other discomforts from treatment, from something as small as chapped lips to something more severe such as diarrhea, what used to be fun things in your life simply stop being fun. Even lying in bed and read for half an hour sometimes makes your eyes tired and watery.

I guess the big word is “temporary,” the fact that you don’t know what the future holds for you, you don’t know what life will be like when all of this is over, you don’t know how long this temporary state will last, and in a cruel way, you don’t know whether it will be over – ever.

I expressed those thoughts vaguely to my friend. And I heard silence for a few seconds. The detective part of my brain kicked in, and I figured there might be tears on the other end of the line.

I guess I expressed my doubts and unease clearly enough after all. So I mumbled something stupid like, “It’ll be all right. Don’t worry,” before we moved on to silly things, and laughter.

But when I got off the phone, I realized how this friend helped me pinpoint my problem: it’s all in the word “temporary.”

Somehow in this world, we’ve learned to believe firmly that in our lives, awful things are temporary, that bad situations will go away and all our problems will pass. That determined -- sometimes blind -- optimism helps us fight back, stick it out, and live happily ever after with loads of hope.

That’s all great, but maybe from time to time, we should recognize our situations objectively and realize maybe we shouldn’t just wait out the storms. We should learn to live with them. Not that we shouldn’t have hope – the mind is a very powerful thing. But it just makes more sense to stop planning my life after this treatment period, the period when everything is on hold. Then I can begin living now. I can adapt to this new life. I can say, even if this “awful situation” goes on forever, I can still make a good life out of it. Maybe I should learn to “live in the moment” (yuck, yuck. Which self-help book did I learn that phrase from? ;-)

Then, life wouldn’t be on hold. A good day can start now. I don’t need to find any new balance to life. I can just listen to the new rhythm in life and dance to it -- and, enjoy this moment.

P.S. Damn, I can write 'em self help books. Heehee.