I do wish he had explained why, given that he had only a 10% chance of beating his type of cancer, he chose to be ravaged by chemo and radiation instead of taking a pass and enjoying the time he had left? In the end, does that undercut his message? To be honest, Lee loses me a bit when he delves into his perception of past lives, although many readers will find it delightful, because there’s enough evidence there to think he isn’t just kidding! He included it to suggest we should open our minds and hearts to the idea that we don’t know everything, so we should give ourselves over to the joy of the “what if?” It also explains why he wasn’t freaked out about dying, and by extension, why we don’t need to be either. And one of the best ways to deal appropriately with stress is meditation. We have an intricate and complex immune system that knows what to do with cancer.” The more healthfully you deal with stress, the more your body is able to do its thing. For example, “Our bodies have an incredible capacity for self-healing. I became free of what life was supposed to be and able to enjoy life as it was.” “Meditation also helped me see that my expectations were just stories that I was telling myself about life. This in turn benefits blood pressure and circulation improves respiratory function reduces the perception of pain and body discomfort lowers the risk of artery blockage decreases heart rhythm disturbances and risk of heart attack modifies fear and anxiety reactions and enhances immune system function. If I looked for trouble, stress and heartache that was what I would find.” He also began a lifetime study of meditation, which can change the physiology of the human brain so one produces fewer stress hormones. “If I looked for fun, joy and playfulness, I would find it. I now realized that looking for stress creates stress.
“My parents taught me to look for stress in life. He says of his well-intended, Depression-era parents, “Maybe they came by their anxieties honestly, but they honed them to an art!” Like me, Lee was raised to be afraid of everything, sure that disaster loomed around every corner. Then he received a grave diagnosis, but he never freaked out, and his family and friends wanted to understand why. Lee was a guy with a positive outlook, doing good work at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California where he helped empower even very sick people to live life fully. Lee, who loved rock and roll, borrowed the name of his book from a Warren Zevon album. As we get older, we tend to consider these existential questions, so I ask you: What if you lived every day completely unafraid of dying? This is the premise of a very enjoyable and thought-provoking new book, Enjoy Every Sandwich, by the late Dr. Yes, I am weird but you knew that already. and there were many small towns in countless states.How would you live if you weren’t afraid to die? The next morning, I sat in the garage looking down the driveway waiting for his return with a feeling in my gut that has returned far too many times throughout my life. Once she realized he was in the car, she ran out the door for him in her long night gown and was begging him to return. He in return, continued yelling at the top of his lungs with his index finger and little finger directed towards her with the look on his face that implied his desire to have bullets streaming from his fingers. I watched as my mother hurled pots and pans toward him. It's ironic that one of my first memories as a child is of me sitting on a love-seat, coloring an outline of a treasure chest overflowing of jewels and gold coins in the midst of a heated argument between my mother and a relatively new step-father.