Beyond Spirited

Picture yourself being the golden boy of American cycling by age 24, nevertheless, just after a fatherless-childhood.

Regardless, in next to no time, you unearth the fact that you’ve developed an affair with cancer, which conquered your testicle, forging a great empire that stretches all the way from your abdomen, through lung to brain.

Needless to say, your life does turn upside down with a guaranteed 20% survival chances. It is as if the life itself has gone astray, let alone your dreams!

Yet, someway, not alone do you live to tell the tale but you also have your dream all fired up – a record seven consecutive times winner of the “Tour de France”- A single most grueling >3600 km bicycle event that lasts for three weeks.

And.., that’s Lance Armstrong for you, folks!

Each single utterance from the Book: “It’s not about my bike” is just hope that speaks through the disease of cancer. And yes, it’s true I run out of adjectives, as I’m trying badly here to describe the potential of a human being.

When Lance was juvenile, as like every troubled-kid, he started pedaling cycle to just run away from his troubles. And a turbulent childhood always brings a distressed manhood, believe me I‘ve seen it.

“You’ve cancer” are probably the nearly all terrible sentence to experience the phenomenon called “fear”. May be the scene from the movie 50/50 could do a picture to the Lance’s words!

But the worst part in cancer is chemotherapy, as you never know if it does work until the very end of the treatment, let alone undergoing, which is far worse than the actual misery of the cancer. During the treatment, you tend to lose your appetite while the immune system is depressed out. You get your internal bleeding, vomiting, nausea, physical exhaustion, dehydration, etc.

And Life could not be pained extra in such times when you’re given a porn magazine to summon an erection at a sperm bank before the chemotherapy makes you completely infertile.

Lance writes, “Show me the dotted line and I’ll sign. I’ll do something else. I’ll go back to school, I’ll be trash man, do anything, just let me live”.

It’s the trepidation of death, which makes life clear-cut! But Lance took it to a limit, literally where, the cancer had realized itself that it chose a wrong body to live in.

Indeed, in the voice of my heart, Lance needed three combatants to prevail the malignant cells. 1) Treatment. 2) People. 3) Courage.

Likewise, I wish every “tumor-infected” body had access to the lance-sort of treatment, physically. The guilty for being such fortunate did conceive the Lance Armstrong foundation to inspire & empower the cancer sufferers because Lance thought illness is universal.

But, to progress in psychological front, you do need a few people, as the truth draws fine line between life and death, which actually describes the nucleus of friendship, family & love. After all, you would die healthier if only you know you’re going to be missed. And lance had people living the grammar of friendship & love.

When lance believed in courage, he gave him only two choices: “either give up, or Fight like Hell”. And it’s where the human potentials politely speak beyond margins!

According to him, the cancer was the single best thing that ever happened to him. He says,“When I was sick, I saw more beauty and triumph in a single day than I ever did in a bike race”.

Now, “Connecting the dots” is all I may well remember here, said by Steve jobs, as the cancer, in another hand, provided Lance enough pain & anger to live & win 7 consecutive “Tour de France” titles.

As the saying goes "When life gives you 100 reasons to cry, Show life 1000 reasons to smile". 

After all, he is such a street fighter, that one thing which all my heroes commonly share!

And so, if we think we run the toughest life here, maybe we should spare a thought or two for the millions of people like lance, living the death in the haplessness of cancer being incurable in such rare cases.

When I finished reading the book, I just told myself “fight like hell, just the way lance did”. And everybody please!

with hope,

Murugapandiyan P