Pure Contradiction

What made this program memorable for me was meeting so many cancer patients who said their unwelcome diagnosis opened doors to new opportunities, new friends, new accomplishments – which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.  

Their witness gives credence to what Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us, as saints and poets often do – that beauty can be found in the most crushing circumstances.

This was the second time I was invited to have a hand in Art Fridays, a monthly enrichment program sponsored by the Center of Excellence for Cancer Support Services at Mount Sinai Health System. The aim of Art Fridays is to nurture creativity, community, and healing for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers. 

Mount Sinai Health System comprises the Icahn School of Medicine, Phillips School of Nursing, and seven hospital campuses in the New York City area, as well as a large ambulatory presence in the region. Mount Sinai is internationally acclaimed for its excellence in research, patient care, and education across a range of specialties.

 

At the Icahn School of Medicine, for example, “Patient-Scientists” are central to the school’s drive to move discoveries from the laboratory to the patient's bedside rapidly and effectively.

This is the role one of the Art Fridays participants, a survivor of lung cancer, plays – serving as an advocate for the Bronx community covered by The Tisch Cancer Institute. She works to increase community education and awareness of cancer research, build trust in research, and provide feedback to the Tisch research teams. 

Another Art Fridays participant, after being diagnosed with colon cancer, became energized to the point that he’s published four books, with another on the way – so far.

He brought to the workshop one of his books, a poetry collection, and gave out signed copies. These lines from one of his poems might explain his single-mindedness:

These folks, and others like them, prove Rilke right. Adversity and beauty are not mutually exclusive, just as he said, even though he himself faced an early death from leukemia. 

In fact, Rilke’s epitaph likened his life – which was marked with both celebrity and suffering – to a rose. 

He called this delicate flower “pure contradiction,” reminding us that the fragile bloom bears painful thorns. But is, at the same time, perhaps the most beautiful of flowers.