Sometimes you can teach old dogs new tricks, and other times those old dogs just need to remember the tricks they already know.

I have been living with mul­ti­ple myeloma for over five years, and trust me when I say that I am very grateful for this time. My gratefulness for life is hard to put into words. I love getting up in the morn­ing and realizing that I am looking down at the green grass. That is tre­men­dous and never taken for granted.

That is not to say, how­ever, that life is always a bowl full of cherries. Often­times there is strug­gle. Strug­gle is one of life’s con­stants, com­ing in many shapes and sizes.

About two months ago, in the midst of this coro­na­virus pan­dem­ic (as if we mul­ti­ple myeloma sur­vivors had nothing else to strug­gle with), I was terribly nervous, anxious, and very unsettled. Struggle, it seemed, was piling on, and I could not get away from all of the “bad news.” It was unbelievable and cer­tainly not very much fun. All of the mes­sages put out by the media and others were neg­a­tive and added more fuel to my nervous un­cer­tainty.

Maybe I was a fool for thinking that this gift of life was really great. I mean, everything I heard was telling me that I should be fearful and panicked. And oftentimes, this news was com­mu­ni­cated by someone who seemed glad to be telling me all of this. Crazy.

And then it hap­pened. One morn­ing, as I was looking in the mirror brushing my teeth, I had this mind-, heart-, and eye-opening revelation. In order for me to con­tinue on without becoming a basket case of nerves, worry, and angst, I needed to make a change. I needed an ad­just­ment.

I needed to embrace the strug­gle.

That’s right. I needed to embrace the strug­gle.

Rather than avoid the new reality, with the dangers and fears that were being highlighted each and every day from just about every outlet of in­for­ma­tion on the planet, I needed to embrace it and make it my own. I needed not to be fearful but ac­cepting; I needed not to be panicked but responsible and car­ing. I needed to remember some of the lessons I had learned from my ex­peri­ence of having and living with mul­ti­ple myeloma, and I needed to apply those lessons as I moved for­ward in this life with COVID-19.

First and foremost, having mul­ti­ple myeloma reminds me that life is a gift no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances. I go to treat­ments, take in­jec­tions, and try to sur­vive because I cherish the gift of life re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances. Once I ac­cepted that my life re­quires spe­cial adaptations, I moved for­ward. I let go of trying to manipulate the situation to meet some sort of preconceived idea of what I was owed or what my life should look like. I let go thinking that I, “Mark The Almighty,” was the man with the plan. I realized that life hap­pens, and it is my choice to take it or leave it.

Spending a lot of energy judging the unfairness or cruelty of my par­tic­u­lar situation, be it my mul­ti­ple myeloma or this pan­dem­ic, was useless, unproductive, draining, and a bit foolish.

By embracing my life as it comes to me and moving gently with gratefulness to the cir­cum­stances of my life, I recog­nized that “struggle” was no longer present. The strug­gle was only present if I defined my cir­cum­stances as strug­gle.

Certainly my life has pain, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and testing situations. But that is life, plain and simple. Having mul­ti­ple myeloma taught me that and keeps teaching me that. I remembered that the emotional and physical “adventures” or “escapades” that I have encountered often bring so much love, car­ing, kindness, and under­stand­ing to my life. It was and is such a humbling ex­peri­ence because most, if not all, of that good encountered oc­curs without direct input from myself if I am aware of its presence.

My life cir­cum­stance is only a strug­gle if I fight it, wrangle with it, and try to put a hot branding iron on it labeling it as strug­gle.

Having mul­ti­ple myeloma, or for that mat­ter any other chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stance in my life, is a great reminder that my ego-driven perception of how things “should” be is pretty worth­less. What is not worth­less is an awareness or mindfulness of the goodness of the gift of life and all that we get to ex­peri­ence re­gard­less of whether or not it complies or corresponds with some preconceived idea as to how it should be or what we are owed.

I be­lieve that not a one of us asked to have mul­ti­ple myeloma. And, of course, no one asked to have it in conjunction with all of the others chal­lenges that life brings on a daily basis. 

But we love life, we love the gift.

Nothing new. As “old dogs” – and I apologize to those of you who are not old dogs, but I think you will get the mes­sage – we cer­tainly could ben­e­fit from remembering some of our old tricks.