by Gail Hamm, program director

This morning, I want to reflect on one of Regina Brett’s Life Lessons: Always choose life. I’d like to change the word from “life” to “living”. I say this because it’s so easy to stop living while still being alive. By that I mean going through the motions as if one is living, but not really being engaged or conscious or aware of each moment. This often occurs because of trauma, which causes a person to become stuck in time. Having a loved one die, being diagnosed with a terminal illness, or being traumatized through an accident or military experience are examples of incidents which can cause “stuckness”. There is so much to experience in life, and time is so short, that it’s really a great waste of human potential when a person stops living each moment. We have a tag line here at Cancer Services: count moments count moments count moments count moments. It can be read as count moments or moments count. “Always choose life” means that moments count, so don’t miss them!