Quality versus Quantity of Life

Today while walking my dog, I saw a neighbor whose mom has been struggling with cancer for several years now. When I asked about her, he said that she is on a third experimental drug, and that the goal is now quality of life, not quantity. In other words, it is about living out her life, not keeping her body alive for others.

Although this may be devasting for her family, it is also a lesson for you and me.

How is your quality of life right now, for example? Are you angry at the world due to all the negative news? Are you sad that your life is not positive right now? Do you hate certain people or groups of people who do not share your views? It can be very easy to feel this way.

Yet, you can change the quality of your life. You can be happy and positive if you so choose.

NO! You say. How can I be happy when the world is suffering? I must be empathetic, and I must suffer alongside.

Give me a few paragraphs to consider this with you.

I want you to understand that you are an energetic being, and that at the atomic level, your body is nothing but particles of energy and space. Carbon atoms are only energy. And so are you. This matters because the energy you put out through your body and mind is shared with the people in your vicinity, your town, your country, and the planet. If you are angry, sad or hateful, you share that energy and you bring down the people and things in the world, because they are all energy too.

Imagine walking into a meeting, like I did yesterday, and the others were all bemoaning the state of affairs here in the USA. One woman’s daughter will be fired next week, because she works for a department in the federal government that has been closed down. This woman is obviously upset with the government, and fearful for her daughter. By the time she finished explaining, all of us in the room were also upset. Our energy was brought to a low point, and I could feel some helplessness.

Then I remembered that lesson about energy. I explained to everyone that we need to remember to raise our vibration, feel hope and love and compassion for the issues and people we care about, rather than fear for them. With these positive emotions, we changed the emotions in the room, and we were then able to come to the meeting in a better frame of mind.

Quality of life. It is an aspiration, and a goal at each moment. It is human to fall into fear. It takes amazing strength to be able to keep a positive attitude.

I have written before about the time I had an emergency hysterectomy and almost died. What I have not talked about as much is the gift of life that was given. Just before going up to the operating room, the doctor asked me if I had documents about what I wanted should I go into cardiac arrest. I had one moment to understand what life is all about.

Life is not keeping my body alive on machines. Life has an end, what we call death. As a spiritual person, I don’t believe it is the end, only a portal into another reality, one which I cannot imagine. At this moment of questioning, I realized I did not want to be a burden on my family, and that they would live better lives – in other words, have more quality of life – if I died rather than was kept “alive” on machines. Certainly, there would be no quality of life for me, either. The decision was easy.

This gift of deciding my fate changed my life. After the operation, when I woke up, my attitude toward life had changed. I could now make a positive difference in the world through a life well lived rather than one based on fear of death.

At this moment in time, I ask you: can you now choose quality of life? Choose happiness, compassion and hope?