Michael realizes that chemotherapy — actively choosing to be poisoned — is the most extreme thing he’s ever said yes to. This creates a powerful recalibration: if he can say yes to chemo, what would he ever say no to? The logic applies both to health decisions (fasting for five days is trivial compared to being poisoned for three) and to life broadly. Nothing else is as extreme.
Tara connects this to her experience of natural childbirth, where her midwife refused to let her resist the pain and instead made her actively say “I want this, I choose this.” The mind resisted — but the more she said yes, the easier the experience became. The parallel isn’t exact (childbirth has hormones helping; chemo has poison), but the mechanism is the same: actively choosing the hardest thing transforms the relationship to it.
Michael arrives at a surprising place: “It’s so fun even the parts that I hate about living. It’s a pleasure to get to struggle and get to resist and get to be confused. It’s great actually. It’s fantastic. Not actually a problem.”
“Chemo was such an insane thing to say yes to — why wouldn’t I say yes to anything else in my life?”
“It’s a pleasure to get to struggle and get to resist and get to be confused. It’s great actually.”
Related Concepts
- Accepting death enables genuine choice
- Embrace intensity for transformation
- Embracing not creating intensity