"The Talmud makes a statement: Every person should walk through life with two notes, one in each pocket. On one note should be the words, Ani afar ve‘efer—I am nothing but dust and ashes. On the other note should be the words, Bishvili nivra ha’olam—For my sake was this world created.
Those two notes are in complete contradiction to one another, yet the Talmud says they both are true. Here is what they mean to me. When I sit on a bench facing the shore where I live and watch the waves roll in and look at the endless sky, I become aware of how insignificant I am. All this was here millions of years before me and will go on millions of years after I am gone. In the face of the eternity of time, I am not even a radar blip, I‘m not even a point on the line. I am totally insignificant. Therefore, if I am to live to 85 instead of 58, so what? My death, like my life, means nothing in the long run. Even the pain my family would feel would be lost in the full long scheme of things. Ani afar ve’efer—I am nothing but dust and ashes.
On the other hand, Bishvili nivra ha’olam—for my sake the whole world was created! I am so significant, I am so important, so critical, that all this is worth being just so I can experience it! Can you imagine, what a miracle we all are, just by being? The mathematical probability, said Albert Einstein, of my being born as who I am, is not .000000001; it is zero! Yet I am here. And every moment of life is a miracle beyond my comprehension! That I can see those waves, that I can walk on that shore, that I can smell that sea, that I can gaze on a sunset. These are experiences that quadrillions of souls never had and never will! I am in Awe of this universe and of my presence in it. Every moment of life is a miracle! And we must never forget that! That’s the lesson of cancer, or any life-threatening disease! The magnificence of the moment! Should I complain after having been granted so many moments of this, even one moment of being? Certainly not! And if I choose to complain, to be bitter about the probability that I will not make it to 80, what should I say to those young people in Turkey who were buried in the earthquake, or to the children who were shot by militia in East Timor, or those infants in any hospital’s critical-care neonatal unit? How many of them would give everything just to live long enough to be a lymphoma patient at the age of 57? Sure, it would be nice to live to 90. But if I’m not grateful for reaching my age and having all the magnificent blessings that have been and are still mine, then I know nothing of life. I stand each day in awe of my own existence, which frankly is beyond my comprehension. I cannot truly fully grasp the realization that I am. How long I am is not nearly as significant as that I am, now, and have been for so long already."
