Life Cannot Be Understood Without Death

I believe that, whether you have cancer or not, people tend to think much more about death than about life. It’s something intrinsic to human nature.

Life cannot be understood without death, just as shadows cannot be understood without the sun. I’ve always held onto this idea, and I think it’s a beautiful analogy that explains the inevitability of many things beyond our control.

Another Friday, I meet again with Dr. Carlos Cabrera, who tells me that every cancer is like a fingerprint; while one cancer may resemble another, its structural peculiarities make it unique. It’s like books, which are all made of paper, but their content is what makes them distinct.

So, I ask myself: if every cancer is unique, is every life unique too?

Life is extraordinary: by day, it gives us the sun, and by night, the moon, and in between, it teaches us about photosynthesis, thermodynamics, earnest money contracts, mercurochrome and reggaeton, Alzheimer’s, dog birthdays, the Treaty of Versailles, croquette sandwiches, and Elliott Smith.

And there, in the midst of all this noise, in certain chapters, you sometimes get to write a few lines between the paragraphs. Every existence is unrepeatable, and perhaps that’s where the beauty of it all lies: in the fact that neither death, nor the sun, nor even cancer can take away the uniqueness of living.