In just a few weeks I’ll face an emotional and bittersweet milestone, the fifth anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. Above all I’m grateful that I made it through the grueling medical treatments that I had in 2011 and 2012. There were moments when I felt so sick and physically weak from surgery or chemotherapy that I was afraid I might die. I thank God for my oncology team; they were always there and never stopped encouraging me. It turns out they were right to be optimistic about my prognosis, or at least to be confident that I could achieve remission. I’ve been in remission from ovarian cancer, a disease that many refer to as the silent killer of women, for four years now.

As my cancer anniversary approaches, I’ve been thinking a great deal about how much things have changed for me. Personally, I’ve discovered that physical attractiveness, material possessions and social status all matter less to me now. These things frequently seem to fade into irrelevance as I confront a life-threatening illness. Meanwhile, my relationships with other people, discovering ways that I can make a difference in the world and learning more about the essence of who I am are currently at the forefront of my agenda and have an extremely high priority to me.  Most of all, I’m aware of time and of the immeasurable value of each day that I’m alive. Here are some powerful meditations that I though I would share.

“I ask you to imagine that there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course.

Each of us has such a bank, its name is time. Every morning, it credits you 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off at a loss, whatever of this you failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.

There is no drawing against “tomorrow.” You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in happiness and health. The clock is running. Make the most of today.”

 — Marc Levy, French novelist

“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”

― George Harrison

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

— Henry David Thoreau

In the film Dead Poets Society Robin Williams plays an unconventional English teacher named John Keating. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes the teacher stands with his students gazing at some vintage school portraits. As they view the photographs of previous generations, this is what Keating tells the group of young men in his class:

“They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones,  just like you. Invincible,  just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things,  just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope,  just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it?  —  Carpe  —  hear it?  —  Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”