"Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing but the sense that you choose."
~Sartre

One of the things I have come to believe in the past 2 months is that your interpretation of the events of your life are the guiding factor in determining who you are as a unique individual.

I don't believe that you are who you are becuase of the course of events that takes place during your life. You are who you are because of your interpretations of these events.

My experience has made me who I am not because of the events: the fact that I have cancer or I get 4 days of nausea every two weeks, not because I was very upset by the diagnosis or becuase I am not even half way done my treatment. My experience has made me who I am becuase of the way I've chosen to interpret these events.

The only person in charge of how I interpret these events is me. I have the choice to react to these events however I want. And these options of interpretation lead you in entirely different directions. So the decision to go down one road to feeling happy or the other road to feeling miserable is entirely up to me and only me. Sure I can get advice from other people but ultimately, it is only I who determines what choices I make in life. Those choices shape the way I view the events around me and shape the person I am. I am the only one in control of who I am and how I see the world around me.

I'll be the first to admit that its awful and its hard and i hate it and I wish I wasnt going through it but those arent the most important factors to me. And if I let those become more important than they are, thats when I start coping badly. That's when I become a mess and let this consume me. But I'm in control of that. The most important things are that I'm still happy most of the time, that when I feel bad I can get myself happy again.

I will never let myself interpret this as the end of the world. I will never let the negative aspects of my situation take precedence over the positive aspects. I determine my happiness.

In a time where everything in my life seems like it's in the hands of a doctor or just plain luck, it's incredibly reassuring to know that my mind is still my own and cannot be touched. The control my mind has is so much more powerful than this cancer. That will never change.

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