Live, Laugh, Love, …..slow down

My first cousin has cancer. Not the “good kind” like Charlie had in ‘Party of Five’ as Larry David referenced, but the bad kind ….that kills.

He is finally in remission but not quite out of the danger zone, yet he’s still considered a walking miracle.

He is able to work and get back to his daily activities- albeit modified and he seemed to be in good spirits.

When we finally had a chance to catch up last week his best advice to me was simple:

Slow down. Stop rushing.

You would think he would be in a major rush now that he is finally done with chemo…. A rush to get out and LIVE, to get up and GO, to get down and DO? But in actuality, he just wants to stay put, go to the beach, smoke a good cigar, drink a great glass of scotch and watch his 6 year old daughter swing on the swings.

The irony is that he used to live a FAST life.

He was that highly sought after, wealthy and eligible good looking bachelor, whom for years, partied like a rock star and lived a wild lifestyle.

He said he was always in a rush. He used to drive his Maserati and beep frantically at the slower drivers in front of his lane and then, always very agitated, he would zoom around them to get ahead. He just could not tolerate slow drivers.

.

He had no patience for lines or for traffic or for anything slow. At one point in time he lived in Florida, the land of the old, so that couldn’t have been easy for his type A personality.

He was always GO, GO, GO!!

Now, he looks back and asks himself “WHY???”

Not “Why me?” about the cancer like you’d think , but “why the rush”??

He told me that if there’s anything good he can take away from this cancer that is eating away inside of him, is that it has slowed him down enough to actually enjoy his time here.

Lesson Learned:

This time it’s simple:

Take it slow, enjoy what you are given and live it fully.