Inspiration

What an odd few days.

Not so much in my own life, which has been its usual combination of activities. Running errands with my son, catching up on work, shuttling the children to various practices, rehearsals, auditions, and events. Fixing the leak in the bathtub faucet. Trying to decide what to make for dinner. Watching the Patriots get their butts handed to them. The usual.

There's the unusual stuff. Heisman Trophy finalists with fake cancer-stricken girlfriends. And our buddy Lance, attempting an "apology" but mostly revealing what a colossal ass he is.

For what it's worth, I don't think Manti Te'o is malicious. I think he's a kid who messed up and wasn't mature enough to grasp a situation that got out of hand. It also wouldn't surprise me to find out that there's something more to the story, though I'm not sure what that it. It's a shame that a story he told, about losing someone to cancer, that served as inspiration to others, turned out not to be true.

Then there's Lance. I've lost count of how many times I said it was the last time I'd write about him.

Again, for what it's worth, I think Lance has a mental problem. It's not much different from lots of other geniuses' problems (and he is a physical genius, I would argue, even if he was doping) -- extreme focus, to the point of excluding the feelings of people around you, people who apparently cared for you. It's kind of bad when you can't remember how many people you sued because they were telling the truth about you. Unlike Te'o, Lance was malicious. But like Te'o, this one is sad, too, because a cancer story that served as inspiration turned out to be based on a lie.

I've been rolling those two stories around in my head for a few days, and I keep coming back to that "inspirational cancer story" angle, something that hasn't really been covered anywhere else. I guess it hits me because last week, when I informed my support group that it was my fifth cancerversary, I actually had a few people tell me I was an inspiration. I was surprised at first, but I quickly remembered my first post to the group: I told people how inspired I was just by reading their signature lines, which said what kind of lymphoma they had and gave details about milestones like diagnosis and treatments. It was great to see how long people had, well, been alive.

So my first reaction to being an inspiration was something like, "Inspiration? What did I do other than stay alive for five years? It really wasn't all that much work."

But maybe that's where the inspiration comes from -- living a normal life. I know there are people with cancer who wish they could  replace a shower head, or take out the trash. Just physically be able to. Or emotionally imagine that in five years they'll still be around to take their son for new sneakers. So if my staying alive is an inspiration, then so be it.

No Heisman trophies. No Tour de France victories. Just simple living.

Which, apparently, is inspiration enough.