The way I view my life was completely transformed by an innocent game of summer camp Jenga. I am a self proclaimed Jenga connoisseur, having dabbled in all the wondrous and terrifying forms of Jenga over the course of my eighteen years. There is nothing quite like the deadened hush that befalls a living room as one struggles to pull that wobbly block from within its wooden perch, palms sweaty but fingers steady as the block comes free. I have never experienced more exhilaration and angst than during a game of giant driveway Jenga, as I creep forward to pluck a two by four from the tower of blocks and scamper quickly backwards lest the wooden Jericho flatten me.
At summer camp, we played icebreaker Jenga, which is nearly as painful as it sounds, but not as painful as the dreaded two truths and a lie. In this version of Jenga, each block is etched with a question of profound depth usually ranging from the imaginative “what superpower would you love to have?” to the slightly more practical “do you prefer cats or dogs?”. Some questions, however, did possess a quality of heartfelt merit, like the one I finally wriggles free to the relief of my fellow campers, after much nail biting and duress, “what is the best thing that has ever happened to you?” My answer much like the toppling demise that ends a Jenga game, was instantaneous: cancer.
Until this point I had always viewed my battle with childhood cancer in a negative light. I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in January of 2009 at the age of four. I hated every aspect of my disease from the constant chemo and white washed hospital walls to the comments my fellow kindergartners made about my “bad haircut.” I wrestled for years after my diagnosis with survivorship as part of my identity. Survivorship was not a trait I desired or felt I had earned within the cancer community. After all, I only battled leukemia, the childhood cancer with the highest cure rate. Was I a survivor, or merely proof a widely accepted statistic?
My Jenga question, the block I freed so successfully from its wooden fortress had inadvertently caused my word to topple down and left pieces splayed all around me. Why? Why was my answer so instantaneous and concrete? Why did my subconscious seem certain that cancer was the best thing that had ever happened to me?
I began to think, the block still clutched in my sweaty palm, fingers no longer steady but trembling, other campers staring, wondering if I would elaborate on my answer so we could just move on with the game already. I thought about my experiences and the way I defined my survivorship as a burden instead of a gift. I wondered how my life could be different if I began to see my cancer experience as an opportunity to glean from the bountiful harvest of empathy and compassion for others my own suffering had instilled within me.
I cannot recall playing Jenga since that fateful day at camp, nor have I needed to. I am now constructing my own Jenga tower, each block represents a positive lesson I have pulled from my survivorship. The blocks of hope, empathy, gratitude, and a desire to see good in every situation. Every now and then a negative block plants itself within the tower, but i am ready for it. With a steady hand and satisfied grin, I wriggle the block free from the pile, discard it, and continue to build, always learning and always playing the wonderful game which we call life.
~~I Am Carolyn Thompson