"Can Cancer Be Caused By A COOKIE?"

Eating the Cookie
By: Rachel Naomi Remen

Another of my patients, a successful businessmen, tells me 
that before his cancer he would become depressed unless 
things went a certain way. Happiness was "having the 
cookie." If you had the cookie, things were good. If you 
didn't have the cookie, life wasn't worth a damn. 
Unfortunately, the cookie kept changing. Some of the time 
it was money, sometimes power, sometimes sex. At other 
times, it was the new car, the biggest contract, the most 
prestigious address. A year and a half after his diagnosis 
of prostate cancer he sits shaking his head ruefully. "It's 
like I stopped learning how to live after I was a kid. When 
I give my son a cookie, he is happy. If I take the cookie 
away or it breaks, he is unhappy. But he is two and a half 
and I am forty-three. It's taken me this long to understand 
that the cookie will never make me happy for long. The 
minute you have the cookie it starts to crumble or you 
start to worry about it crumbling or about someone trying 
to take it away from you. You know, you have to give up a 
lot of things to take care of the cookie, to keep it from 
crumbling and be sure that no one takes it away from you. 
You may not even get a chance to eat it because you are so 
busy just trying not to lose it. Having the cookie is not 
what life is about."

My patient laughs and says cancer has changed him. For the 
first time he is happy. No matter if his business is doing 
well or not, no matter if he wins or loses at golf. "Two 
years ago, cancer asked ne, 'Okay, what's important? What 
is really important?' Well, life is important. Life. Life 
any way you can have it. Life with the cookie. Life without 
the cookie. Happiness does not have anything to do with the 
cookie, it has to do with being alive. Before, who made the 
time?" He pauses thoughtfully. "Damn, I guess life is the 
cookie."