How do we proceed in the face of mystery?

I’m about to participate in a clinical trial — a phase 3, randomized study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of belantamab mafodotin compared to daratumumab in people like me with relapsed, recurrent myeloma.

Some 500 participants will be ‘randomised’ to one of the two drugs. Treatment will continue until progressive disease, death, unacceptable toxicity, or the end of the six-year study, whichever comes first.

A potential bonus is that I might benefit, although the chances of this are low and the downsides in the form of side effects are significant. But I feel the pull to put my body and my data on the line for the greater good.

From a soul perspective, this new chapter is another reminder to live mindfully and well, and to be grateful for the many people who love and support me.

Living with a life-limiting cancer sharpens my awareness of dying and death and makes them my closest companions.

It’s also true that life is endless, always morphing and re-emerging from the seeds of last season’s bloom. There’s no closure, no resolution, no certainty, and wishing it were otherwise only creates suffering.

From this standpoint, cancer is an existential gift — a metaphor for how life and death are having their way with me in an infinitely unfolding mystery. I am mystery. Cancer is a mystery. Life and death are mysteries. And yet they are navigable mysteries.

Embracing these mysteries means leaping into the void, tumbling into the abyss. Going into freefall can be unnerving till you get the hang of it, because the illusion that we control our destinies is the cultural Kool-Aid that saturates a lot of what we think and feel.[i] [ii]

For ego, the void of mystery can feel like mayhem, a descent that could end badly unless one can find a fix, a solution, an answer — no matter how presumptive or baseless or foolish.

But I know it would be a mistake for me to seek solace in certainty. My soul knows better and life is taking me where I need to go, even if it feels like chaos to the mind’s desire for solid, reliable answers.

Carl Jung was said to have remarked that if he was forced to choose, he would rather be whole than good. No stranger to mythology and metaphor, he might have been saying that a capacity to live in a deep and abiding way with mystery is wiser than forcing expedient answers onto inconvenient questions.

Which is why I’m persuaded that the messiness I sometimes feel in the face of mystery might mean these feelings can be a midwife to personhood, to elderhood, and the arts of living and dying well.

Dan Gaffney is a teacher and author. His book and podcast series, ‘Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying’ was published in 2019.

[i] McKenna, J (2016). Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory, Wisefool Press, p55

[ii] McKenna, J (2010). Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, Wisefool Press