Cancel culture

Last week during my twice-yearly boob check, my breast oncologist said, “Everything happens for a reason.” I can’t remember what precipitated it. I might have been saying my pericarditis still has me running scared.[1]I might have been saying I’m a little down.

I was taken aback. Are you shitting me? Did she really just say that?

It felt dismissive and disrespectful. I don’t find it comforting, and I don’t believe it’s true. Does child sexual abuse have some silver lining? Does murder happen for some pre-ordained reason? It feels like whitewash, denial of another person’s reality, and bullshit. Among other things.

As these thoughts and feelings gathered like a duststorm inside, all I could say was, “No, I don’t believe that. I don’t think my husband died for a reason.”

“It depends on your faith,” Dr. S allowed. She said something like in time I will see the positives that grew from these things that seem hard.

I felt my teeth grind. She doesn’t know me and doesn’t know the work I do to maintain my mental health, to balance honesty and optimism, to cultivate friendship and community, and choose laughter over tears. I am not perfect. I get down sometimes and when I confess my vulnerability I don’t want to be fed a shlocky Hallmark line that denies my lived experience.

We moved on. Had I had my moles checked? The MRI of my remaining breast was clean. Good. My recent liver ultrasound showed no evidence of metastasis from the eye cancer. Good. Did I meet with the endocrinologist? She felt me up and we were done.

I considered sharing the Everything happens for a reason episode with my eye cancer group. I suspected I’d get a flurry of empathetic responses and some, “Time to find a new oncologist!”

I didn’t post. I don’t want to feel angry, and I don’t want to quit my doc. After my Seattle breast oncologist fired me for nonattendance, I went to Dr. S, who quickly sized up my laissez-faire attitude and determined I needed someone to prod/bully me about scans, meds, my bones, etc.[2]She made referrals and got me appointments, and remembered who I was the next time. She looked me in the eye when we spoke.

So when she said something I found stupid and offensive, I said my piece and let it go. She is human too. Maybe she had sat with one too many whiny patients that day, or with one too many patients who are actively dying while I, thankfully, am not. Maybe she had a fight with her spouse, or her child is in crisis. If I want her to be gentle and understand that I’m not perfect, I need to accept that she is not perfect either.

Rosie taught me a new phrase: #cancelculture. You know: someone makes a mistake and they are done. Finished. Shunned, fired, boycotted, unfollowed. Maybe a public figure made a mistake 20 years ago that resurfaces on the internet. Maybe he apologizes, but not to the right audience or with the right words. Maybe someone is a friend or colleague of the offender and fails to distance herself quickly or forcefully enough from said offender. The result is the same: public shaming. Disgrace and humiliation. It’s happening at every level, down to middle school. Arguably that’s where it started – it’s middle-school culture writ large. No wonder anxiety and depression are reaching epidemic proportions. Middle school is the worst.

As I was writing this, a friend texted me a news story and said, “Is this cancel culture?” I had recently explained the term to her. I read the headline: Harvard Rescinds Admission for Parkland Student Over ‘Offensive’ Comments. Yes, I texted back without clicking the link.[3]

Where is forgiveness, dialog, compassion, growth? Can we be allowed to make mistakes? Where is the line between unforgiveable acts and errors from which we can grow? Rosie showed me a creepy sci-fi show called Black Mirror in which human technological advances come back to bite us. In one episode people’s memories are recorded and kept in some file that can be externally accessed. There is no room for error, even in your thoughts. It doesn't feel so far from our present reality.

Another recent headline I noticed: “Lost in Abortion Debate: Nuance.”

Lost in every debate, I thought. If sexuality and gender and autism are a spectrum, can’t good and evil also be a spectrum? Don’t we all move along a spectrum of emotion and experience, from joy to sorrow and back again, from shame to pride and everything in between, from selfishness to greed, depending on the moment? Humans are capable of so much complexity, yet we are reverting to the most reductionist formulations. Even my little fight with my doctor. Does everything happen for a reason, or not? Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. Maybe we’re both right. Maybe #whocares?

As always, some wise person already said it:

“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

[1]To be super safe about not triggering my inflammatory heart condition, I should keep my heart rate below 100 beats per minute. But everyone’s "complicated pericarditis" is different, and I am running again, and though I take it slow, my heart rate definitely tops 100 bpm. So I run a little scared, and it’s not an approach to life I relish.

[2]A spouse would probably nag me about my health care – this is one of the reasons married people live longer. Note that this holds only for healthy marriages; studies show unhappy marriages have a negative impact on health, and marriage overall confers greater benefits to men than to women.

[3]I have since read the New York Times story, and the student repeatedly used racist language. His apology sounds sincere but may be entirely self-serving. I don’t know what Harvard should have done. Will they dig into the history of all admitted students? Should they act if something comes to their attention? What about matriculated students whose past comes to light? All I know is these are some of the challenges of #cancelculture.

Following 5th grade "recognition" today - Alder started elementary school in Bainbridge, WA; cycled through Harborview and Montessori and back to Harborview in Juneau, AK; and finished at Bishop in Arlington, MA. I'm thankful for the many teachers and friends along the way who supported his growth and resilience.