One of my family’s favorite pols has colon cancer. Congressman Donald Payne is also the first – and remains the only – African-American to serve New Jersey in our nation’s House of Representatives. We hope friends everywhere will join Ari, Ivan and I in wishing you a complete and speedy recovery, Congressman. We look forward to a future with you standing front and center in New Jersey and national politics. Here are some success stories that will give you encouragement to stand strong!
Another friend and one of the fathers of online communities, Howard Rheingold, recently shared his experiences about treatment and recovery from cancer in Howard’s Butt, a blog he created for the purpose. It was praised in a Time Magazine article entitled In Praise of Oversharing. Howard writes:
Return to (the illusion of) the future
I got the news today that yesterday’s CT scan was clear. Besides making me happy, the news caused my mental model of the future to stop wobbling. Before I began watching my thoughts fly by on a regular basis, I had never devoted much attention to the question of how much time I spend thinking about the future. When I started practicing mindfulness meditation, my procedure was to count my breaths and observe how my thoughts arise without any apparent effort on my part. I recognized the nature of the thought that was drawing my attention away from my breath — “remembering,” “associating,” “fantasizing,” “planning.”
USA Today reports, “Another longtime New Jersey politician, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma two years ago at age 86 and remained in office while undergoing chemotherapy treatments. He was pronounced cancer-free later that year.”
The youth from Irvington Ambassadors and Diplomats, Camden and Bergen County are ready for you to lead the Kokokidz workshop on achieving positive social change whenever the time is right.