"Delicious Ambiguity"

I wanted to share a few lines by Gilda Radner, an American comedienne, who died of ovarian cancer, in 1989. She was very well known for her acting capabilities on Saturday Night Live, which is a popular TV comedy show in US.

After her death, her husband Gene Wilder, co-founded Gilda's Club, which is distributed all across US. These centers provide a meeting place for women dealing with cancer, a place where they can find support for their illness, during the treatment and during remission from cancer. These centers have free classes like Art Therapy, Yoga, Massages, Music Therapy and  support groups for the women and their families.

I used to teach Restorative Yoga Therapy to women in Gilda's Club, Detroit for around a year.

To say that I learnt to live by watching these women who were facing death is an understatement.

Their will to survive cancer, their tenacity to find gratitude in a pain-free day, their full-hearted embrace of everybody -- all of these are teachings which I hold dear even today...

These are a few lines from Gilda's book "It's Always Something", in which she describes her illness and struggles with it.

"I wanted a perfect life and a perfect ending...

     Now, I've learnt the hard way that some poems don't rhyme, some stories don't have a clear

     beginning, middle and end.

     Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it ;

     without knowing what's going to happen next...

     Delicious Ambiguity..

    The more I protested aganist this ambiguity, the more my friend pointed out to me that it was          both a terrible and wonderful part of Life:

    terrible because you can't count on anything for sure - like certain good health or complete             recovery from cancer;

     wonderful because no human being knows when another is going to die - no doctor can absolutely predict the outcome of a disease.

The only thing that is certain is change.

      This is 'delicious ambiguity'..

      I started to think "Couldn't there be comfort and freedom in no one knowing the outcome of      anything and all things being possible?"

     An intriguing thought..and I held it close."

As I write these few lines, my sincere desire to all my students and readers is that you also find your own meaning and inner connection to this precious journey of your Life.....

In peace,
Asha