If you were woken up at 2 o’clock in the morning with a ‘battlefield emergency’, would you be scared witless?
Or would you look at the challenge in front of you and manage to keep a cool head?
The chances are, most of us would be frozen to the spot or we’d be running around like headless chickens in the face of an adversity we weren’t prepared for.
2am courage is different. It is rare, raw and responsive based on self-conviction. This is the Napoleonesque courage it takes to stay calm, keep things in focus and face the music.
Cancer courage is 2am courage. This is the sort of wide awake ‘this is not a drill’ courage that demands nothing less than a total commitment to optimism, hope, action and getting on with it.
Cancer means everything goes to pieces, but we don’t have to. Your spirit is stronger than that.
2am courage is not giving up and committing to decisive living and getting things done.
Incurable cancer can keep you awake at night because it’s as scary as it gets. In the wee small hours, you feel more vulnerable and the courage required of you then is enormous, sometimes ridiculously so.
This early morning bravery doesn’t mean you are fearless. Far from it – you are. It’s you saying that you will be afraid but you are not just going to rollover and let it suffocate you. It’s an unyielding determination to keep on living.
Your body might not be invincible but your mindset can be unconquerable, if you allow it to be. 2am courage keeps you in the game because it is steely, resolute and tenacious. You know the day ahead is going to be tough and there won’t be anything simple about it but your ferocious desire to live will keep you trying and keep you from going under.
Clearly, incurable cancer is what it is but your mindset cannot succumb to waving the white flag. You cannot afford to think like that.
Your mind needs to set itself and have the unwavering belief that life is still very much worth living and you have to forge ahead and be an unstoppable force of nature.
Easier said than done when you are knackered, in pain and racked with self-doubt. But that’s where 4am courage comes in by making sure you keep your nerve.
The reality of cancer is that you probably don’t feel particularly courageous at all. You might feel quite the opposite. But if you are getting up each day and managing to live with cancer, then you do indeed have 2am courage.
Cancer requires us to have 2am courage 24 hours a day.