Somewhere between the diagnosis and the treatment, somewhere in the sleepless nights and the waiting rooms, a question arrives that has nothing to do with medicine: why? Not why in a medical sense — you know about cells and mutations and risk factors. But why in the way that shakes the foundation of everything you thought you understood about your life. Why me? Why now? What is the point of any of this?
These are not small questions. They are the kind that crack you open. And if you are asking them, you are not losing your mind. You are doing what human beings have done since the beginning of time when confronted with suffering that does not make sense. You are searching for meaning, and that search, however painful, is a sign that something deep inside you refuses to let this experience be nothing more than a tragedy.
Let me be honest with you first: there may not be a neat answer. Cancer is not a test you were given by the universe. It is not karma. It is not a lesson designed specifically for you. And anyone who tells you that "everything happens for a reason" has probably never sat in a treatment chair watching poison drip into their veins. Some suffering is simply senseless, and pretending otherwise can feel like a betrayal of your own experience.
But here is what I have seen, again and again, in the lives of people who have walked this road: meaning does not have to precede the suffering. It can grow from it. Not because the suffering was good or necessary, but because human beings have an extraordinary capacity to create meaning even in the worst circumstances. Viktor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust, wrote that the last of the human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. You did not choose cancer. But you can choose what you do with the space it has opened inside you.
For some people, meaning comes through relationships. Cancer has a brutal way of stripping away everything superficial, and what remains — the people who stay, the love that deepens, the conversations that finally happen — can feel more real and precious than anything that came before. The friend who drives an hour to sit with you during treatment. The family dinner where everyone is truly present. The conversation with your partner where you finally say the things you have been holding back for years. These moments are not consolation prizes. They are some of the most authentic human experiences available to us.
For others, meaning emerges through a shift in priorities. Cancer forces a reckoning with time. When the future feels uncertain, the present becomes vivid in a way it never was before. Small things — the weight of a cup of tea in your hands, the color of the sky on a clear morning, your child's laughter from the next room — suddenly register with a sharpness that takes your breath away. This is not toxic positivity. This is what happens when the veil of "someday" falls away and you are left with only now.
Some people find meaning through spirituality or faith, whether that means returning to a religious tradition, discovering a new one, or simply sitting with the mystery of existence in a way they never allowed themselves to before. Cancer raises spiritual questions whether you consider yourself spiritual or not. The confrontation with mortality is, at its core, a sacred experience. You do not need to have answers. Sitting with the questions is its own form of meaning.
And some people find meaning by deciding that their suffering will serve something larger than themselves. They become advocates. They volunteer. They share their story. They hold the hand of someone who is newly diagnosed and say: I know. I know how this feels. And you will get through it. Turning your pain into someone else's comfort is one of the most powerful forms of meaning-making that exists.
You do not have to find meaning on anyone else's timeline. You do not have to find it at all if it does not come. But if you feel that stirring inside you, that ache that asks what this is all for, honor it. Follow it. It is not naivety. It is courage. And it may lead you somewhere that your old life, the one before cancer, never could have taken you.