LIFE RE-IMAGINED
By Martha Fagan, RN, BSN
The weekend of August 8th-9th, 2020 should be my 25th year riding in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC), a charity bike event that raises funds to support cancer research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Sadly, COVID19 caused the ride to be cancelled, as it’s impossible to safely distance 5000+ riders over two-days of group rest stops and dormitory sleeping accommodations.
The reality is…COVID stopped the ride but cancer isn’t taking a year off! And, neither are we.
Together with my husband Don I’ve been riding since 1996. The PMC’s motto is “Commit—You’ll Figure It Out” and up to now we always have… juggling to fit in our training rides, struggling to meet our commitment goals and navigating the weekend’s logistics. Those challenges now seem so simple.
This year is forcing us to re-imagine how we will still fund raise and ‘ride’ as not doing so isn’t an option for us. The PMC is one of our shared passions. Our combined creativity, flexibility and resourcefulness to re-imagine our weekend helped us figure it out.
We sent out our pleas for support as we do each year knowing this year there are a plethora of other charities needing funds. Next we determined how to ride safely in solidarity for the cause. We plan on doing a long ride together, long enough to be challenging, though not the 100 miles we would usually ride each day of the PMC. We’ll miss the energy of riding en-masse with our fellow PMCer’s and the cheering of folks gathered by the side of the road, both of which always to serve to keep us motivated to keep pedaling no matter what.
This year is dramatically different AND we’re grateful to be able to ride. It’s our way of honoring the memory of those we’ve lost to cancer and celebrating those survivors living their lives with cancer’s imprint upon them. And this year as we ride we’ll remember the best of the past years and cheers to keep us pedaling.
I’m sharing this story because the PMC is one small example of how we must find ways daily to adapt to the limitations and changes brought on by this pandemic. Summer activities are limited, family gatherings are now choreographed for social distancing, summer camps are closed, stadium stands are empty, and school’s resumption this fall is tenuous at best leaving many parents at a loss for child care.
We are seeing firsthand that what we perceived as life’s certainties is not certain at all, rather quite fragile. To quote Rick Hanson, PhD, psychologist and best selling author on the subject of well-being, “Life is like a house of cards, a single gust of wind — a layoff at work, an injury, a misjudgment, a bit of bad luck – can knock it over.” A pandemic blows the cards all over the place!
We witness human being’s resilience time and again as people overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable. Resiliency is key to not only surviving but also thriving. However, in order to foster our resilience we must first acknowledge our fragility.
Rick Hanson goes on to say, “If we don’t recognize fragility, we’ll miss chances to protect and nurture so many things that matter, and we’ll be needlessly surprised and upset when things do inevitably fall apart. We need to embrace fragility – to see it clearly and take it into our arms – to be grounded in truth, peaceful amidst life’s changes and endings, and resourceful in our stewardship of the things we care about…
Ultimately, try to come to peace with the inevitable: all things fall apart, one way or another. Everything cracks. And yet there is something so beautiful about this part of the truth, as Leonard Cohen says much more eloquently than I can:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in”
We have so many cracks right now inside our families, our communities, our nation and ourselves. Amidst this pain and brokenness lies our opportunity to re-frame and re-imagine how to piece things back together. Our fragility forces us to be courageous as we strive to embrace new ways of functioning to reclaim our lives in whatever way we’re able. Right now it’s hard to see the light in the cracks AND it’s there, however subtle currently.
So in two weeks Don and I will ride our version of the 2020 PMC hoping to still have a meaningful and positive impact on the road to finding a cure for cancer. Figuring out how to do this was easy…figuring out how to bring re-imagining to other facets of our life is more of a challenge. As we choose our next steps we’ll need all the tools I’ve written about these past months—curiosity, self-compassion, courage, gratitude, hope, character strengths and mindfulness—to help guide us in the right direction.
Commit…You’ll Figure It Out.
Martha Fagan is the Vice Chair of the Bacon Free Library. She may be reached through her email at mefagan.bfl@gmail.com
