[00:01.17]A Truth of Life
[00:04.46]One of my patients, a successful businessman,
[00:08.28] tells me that before his cancer he would become depressed
[00:11.78] unless things went a certain way. Happiness was “having the cookie.”
[00:16.48] If you had the cookie, things were good. If you didn't have the cookie,
[00:21.19]life wasn't worth a damn. Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing.
[00:26.22]Some of the time it was money, sometimes power, sometimes desire.
[00:31.47]At other times, it was the new car, the biggest contract,
[00:35.51] the most prestigious address.
[00:37.48]A year and a half after his diagnosis of prostate cancer
[00:41.53]he sits shaking his head ruefully.
[00:44.16]“It's like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid.
[00:47.55]When I give my son a cookie, he is happy. If I take the cookie away or it breaks,
[00:53.13] he is unhappy. But he is two and a half and I am forty-three.
[00:59.35]It's taken me this long to understand
[01:01.43] that the cookie will never make me happy for long.
[01:04.16]The minute you have the cookie it starts to crumble
[01:07.33]or you start to worry about it crumbling
[01:09.96]or about someone trying to take it away from you.
[01:12.36]You know, you have to give up a lot of things to take care of the cookie,
[01:16.52]to keep it from crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you.
[01:20.68]You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so busy,
[01:24.83] just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not what life is about.”
[01:30.63]My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him.
[01:34.78]For the first time he is happy.
[01:37.52]No matter if his business is doing well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf.
[01:44.19] “Two years ago, cancer asked me, ‘Okay, what's important?
[01:48.89]What is really important?’ Well, life is important. Life.
[01:54.58] Life any way you can have it, life with the cookie, life without the cookie.
[01:59.50]Happiness does not have anything to do with the cookie;
[02:03.55]it has to do with being alive. Before, who made the time?” He pauses thoughtfully.
[02:11.42] “Damn, I guess life is the cookie.”
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