deep thoughts (not by Jack Handy)

Since I’ve gotten sick, many people have expressed to me that they wonder why this happened to me. I’ve always wondered if there was a message that G-d was sending me or a lesson I needed to learn from this experience. I’m still wondering and hoping that I have somehow learned this lesson without consciously realizing and that it will soon all be better and that my education is complete.

There’s been a lot of tragedy in the news. Not just individual stuff (like me), but huge communities being affected, by hurricane (Texas, Florida, Caribbean, Puerto Rico) and by gunfire (Las Vegas). And like many people, I wonder why it happened. Seeing pictures of the devastation and some boat rescues brought to mind Noah’s Ark (especially the images of pets being saved by rafts). In biblical times, the people became corrupt and G-d decided to start over, wiping out everyone but Noah and his family. I don’t believe that those who perished in these current tragedies were corrupted and deserving of death, but rather served to be reminders to others of the fragility of life and how precious it is. For some reason, we as a community are not living up to G-d’s expectations of us as to how we treat the earth and each other. Amazingly, in times of such trauma, many people’s reactions were to do good for others, whether it be personally clearing debris, collecting/distributing supplies, donating money, donating blood, etc. So perhaps, the lesson here is the reminder of what we can do in our daily lives for others.

Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur have just passed and it is a brand new year. What lessons from the tragedies can we take with us into the New Year? My new year started with chemotherapy, where every day since I have literally been injecting myself with poison. But hopefully, from this poison coursing through my veins, I’ll (bli ayin harah) soon have a successful bone marrow transplant. I need the poison for the transplant to work, strange as it sounds. So maybe that concept can teach us all a lesson: from the most toxic situations, beauty and life changing experiences can occur. My blessing to all of you is that your new year be filled with opportunities to do good for others and that it will be bring further goodness upon yourselves.

A few unrelated comments:
**Happy Birthday to the best brother ever!
**I won’t be posting tomorrow because of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
**I’ll be inpatient at Children’s on Monday and Tuesday, as I’ll be having my broviac placement on Monday, as well as my third type of chemo. Hopefully (b’ezrat Hashem) all will go well and I’ll be home Tuesday night (Wednesday morning at the latest).