In a conversation today, a friend asked me, "What's the best piece of advice someone has ever given you?" While I provided a very valid answer based on the first thing that came to mind, I wish I had remembered an even better response.

Early in my cancer journey, a former colleague and fellow cancer survivor reached out to me and shared a recommendation that had been passed on to her by another cancer survivor. The guidance was this: "Do not die while you are yet alive." It was a reminder not to ruin the present by ruminating over an uncertain future. I often repeated that line to myself in the first year after my diagnosis, using it as the basis for a pep talk whenever I began to fret about the possibility that I might not be here in the short run.

Kate Bowler wrote something similar in her book No Cure for Being Human. She said: "I want to be alive until I am not."

When I read that line in Bowler's book, it took me back to a conversation with a man who told me that he and his wife—who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020—had created the 10-1 plan: they took stock of what they wanted to accomplish in 10 years and are striving to do that in 1 year. I was deeply touched by their story. So many people face unspeakable hardships and have to find ways to cope. There is no universal solution for the heartaches that come with being alive.

But there are often aphorisms that can ease the mind, many shared by people who have traveled the path before us. After I had completed my fifth round of chemotherapy, a fellow ovarian cancer survivor (indeed, a determined cancer thriver) sent me a cartoon. In it, Charlie Brown says, "Some day, we will all die, Snoopy!" Snoopy replies: "True, but on all the other days, we will not."

On all the other days, we will live.