Antidepressants Blog

I just don’t know where time goes, but it goes somewhere. It moves ‘ faster and faster. If you talk to anybody, they will tell you that time seems to be going faster and faster, seasons merging into seasons. No matter what else we do, there just isn’t much time for sex if there isn’t much time for anything.

WIFE

Our concept of time is tied directly to our concept of life and living, how we view our world, those we love, and what we hope for and expect out of life. I have discussed the time issue in earlier chapters, but there is one central point the couples raised that can help all of us view time in a somewhat different way.

“When we are actually having sex,” reported one wife, “while we are doing it, there is no time at all. I mean, time doesn’t stop or go, it just isn’t. Now, after we have sex, we sometimes lean over and check to see what time it is, but during our sex, that is the only time there is no time.”

This wife and other spouses interviewed indicated that sexual intimacy, the total involvement and merging with another person, is not tied to the time dimension. As pointed out earlier, modern physicists, including Einstein and other so-called new physicists, have documented that time is not a concrete, easily measured “thing.” It is, rather, a highly abstract concept that depends on where we are, whom we are with, and what we are doing. During super sex, we are with the person we love, doing what we want to where and when we want to do it. Our consciousness is altered We are more into someone, responding to that someone rather than carried along by the ticks of a clock.

Perhaps time seems to be going so fast because we watch it so much. The abstract, subjective nature of time is reported by the following spouse with cell disease: “I have learned to sit and do nothing or to make love with my husband. Then time stands still or seems to go slowly. When I first learned I had cancer, I started to do everything I could to stay active every moment. I think I was speeding up time”, because the more I did, the less time there was. Now just sitting, even being bored, seems to make more time.” We do not have to be victims of time if we set the rhythm of our own living.

*233\97\8*

The exact figures are different for different cancers, but they all tend the same way. The outlook is best if it is confined to the organ it started in. It is less good if it has spread to the nearest lymph glands. It is even less good if it has spread into adjacent tissues. It is worst of all if it has spread through the blood, in which case hopefully an operation aiming at cure would not have been attempted. Ask your surgeon for the figures which apply in your particular case.

I know I’m asking you to be very brave here. It may seem much easier to say: ‘Well, I’ll just hope for the best—I don’t want to know what my chances are.’ Don’t forget you can still hope for the best when you do know what your chances are! There are disadvantages to being ignorant. It can mean that you miss out on having additional treatment which might improve your chances. It also means that you cannot realistically plan your personal life. I feel very sad when I remember how often people who have been referred to me for extensive cancer have said things like this: ‘My surgeon told me three years ago that he’d got it all. I’ve just kept on leading a normal life. If only I’d known this was likely to happen I would have . . . taken that overseas trip I’ve planned for so long . . . left that job I hated so much and gone back to studying .. . made up with my brother-in-law so I could see more of my sister . . . learnt to drive a car . . . left my husband then instead of waiting till the kids were older . . .’

Perhaps these people would have made the same decisions if they had known the true situation. Perhaps not. Be brave and ask the questions I suggest. Then, you can make decisions about your personal life which do take into account what is likely to happen in the future. Try to keep this information in perspective. Some people go to extremes—they either allow themselves to be overwhelmed by it or they dismiss it from their minds altogether. Remember that, whatever the statistics say, you can still hope that you will be the lucky exception. Most of us thrive on hope and why not? Just try not to let that hope develop into a fixed and unrealistic belief that you will be the exception. Such a belief could prevent you from making the most of whatever life you do have left.

*248/40/1*