Headline, November 26 2024/ DIAMONDS : ''' LIGHT -DIAGNOSIS- LINKS '''

DIAMONDS : 

''' LIGHT -DIAGNOSIS- LINKS '''

I HAVE GENERALLY BEEN PRIVATE ABOUT MY AFFAIRS - my time as a diplomat just amplifying that reflex. I guess my cynical self believed the world to be full of Levins. 

But I needed a doctor, so I stayed on that bench and contacted everyone I could think of who might help me find the right one - friends, some folks I hadn't spoken to in years, ex-colleagues, a high school girlfriend, a former potential subject for a documentary and so on.

Within hours, even friends of friends were sending emails on my behalf to myeloma experts across the country. In the end, a doctor saw me and delivered my prognosis : With treatment, I might just make it to a cure, maybe 10 years away.

But in hindsight it was not just a doctor I was looking for but something more important. Since that day, so many people have showed up as Kitty's rather than the Levins I had expected.

Had I been hit by a bus instead, I would have not only missed seeing people at their best, but also been robbed of the chance to feel this gratitude - as likely as it sounds - for having been allowed this existence in the first place.

A few days after learning I had cancer, a dear friend of mine with his own health problems drove from hours away to show up at our door lugging two huge bags of the very finest from his favorite Italian restaurant. '' When a friend is in trouble, you circle the wagons,'' he said.

I was reminded of when Lou Gehrig, facing a devastating diagnosis, called himself '' the luckiest man on the face of the earth.''

I AM NOT WRITING HERE to provide advice to you, dear reader, but I do appreciate your company.

Knowing that you are an audience of many rather than a few is a strong motivator to organize my thoughts and, now, to leave this as a record for my boy.

Before my diagnosis, if I was going to give him one bit of advice, it would have been, '' Never miss an opportunity to be generous ; they are rarer than you think.'' I wish I had lived that more.

But today I'd like to add a corollary. '' Don't be afraid to allow others those opportunities, too.''

Maybe it's the steroid talking, but what has become clear to me is that without intimate human connection, however fleeting, we are lost. Everything else seems so small by comparison. It feels like something I had always known - perhaps something that deep down we all know - but then real life made me forget.

''' And through all this, real life had the indecency to keep on doing what it does.

Before cancer split my world into Kittys and Levins, there had always been a few plain old jerks to deal with, and unfortunately they didn't go away. I"ll take a pass on those human connections. '''

BUT THE BELL TOLLS FOR US ALL - and in those rare moments when we truly hear it, life's complexities can leave behind a striking clarity.

The World Students Society honours David C. Roberts, a writer and a filmmaker in New York City.

With most loving and respectful dedication to Mankind, Grandparents, Parents, the Global Founder Framers of !WOW! - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world - and then Students, Professors and Teachers.

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - for every subject in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless