The following blog entry was written by Jeffrey's very close friend, Eric Siegel. It is incredibly powerful and we encourage everyone to read it.
Trapping Fear Inside of a Fishbowl
She’s the one who creeps into his dreams every night to tell him, “I’m going to kill you.” She trespasses into our family’s dreams. She inscribes her name onto the bottles of his chemo-therapy pills. She scratches her initials onto the chills brought on by Lepaera; mountain wind gusts, and holds her hands open like the wings of a vulture over the Barranquillan heat. Since October 17, 2010, his life has been dedicated to finding her in reality. He un-spins her malicious web within the pages of his memoir…
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Her eyes are at ease, cleverly focusing the dark pixels of her stare. At him. Her spell is deceivingly soothing. She’s grown accustomed to tricking the beholder into thinking that it’s he who naturally looks into her. As she scrutinizes him, he elegantly rocks side to side, rotating his chair in composed contemplation, making sense of the situation in a manner that she’s not aware of—that she’s not familiar with.
With his eyes, he acknowledges his wise hands, which he’s been warming up. He disregards her orbit as she’s now undoubtedly present and says to himself, “I don’t feel the cold.” And then I say to him, “Sometimes you do. But you don’t feel it now.”
He understands that he’s not alone in the chair. He's never been. He’s not a blind man looking into a mirror unable to see his own reflection in the newly found perspectives of others. Yet, he is like a blind man, in the sense that he’s assured by feel. He feels when his words are interpreted; he feels when he inspires.
I see her raise an eyebrow while looking intensely at the wall as if it were polished metal and she could simply turn her neck in order to follow a reflection of me dreaming, “I see you, Eric.” “Impossible,” I tell her, “You’re cold and staring at the wall.”
In the other corner of the room, Fisher turns his chair around prepared to address his company, now with a tranquil tenacity in his eyes. He'll do so with his pencil, but he speaks before he writes,
“I’m afraid that there are people dreaming about this room and I’m going to reveal your secrets to them, Fear.”
It’s snowing and Fear’s insides are warmed as she lights a cigarette, taking a long, unforgiving drag of sturdy smoke before sending the immediate world spinning, guided only by the directions of the frenetic flakes. “I will overcome you.” Her words appear in a red color and begin to circulate the room, navigating through the blizzard, “I will make you gasp for air; yearning for the time when you didn't know me.”
Without wishing winter gloves, he assertively places his left hand with poise onto the sphere of the lamp on his desk. His right hand and experienced smile are infinitely energized by her ignorance about who she thinks he is. The right hand mobilizes his pen into a fluid motion,
"Fear scares us in difficult situations. Fear limits our ability to think and react to external stimulus. By acknowledging the existence of fear and by knowing more about it, fear can allow us to eventually get a true understanding of the situation that we are in. Fear can cause a thorough thinking process which can ultimately benefit us in any battle that we face by allowing us to use our fears as a building block for our foundation of strength. What was once a fear can now be used as strength.”
Without showing it, her insides believe the nauseating shiver that just passed as her bare body was exposed for a moment, embarrassed that those seeking adventure were allowed to peek at her pale skin.
I find comfort in her uneasiness, and his interpretation lightens my heavy eyelids with positivity while I continue to clash with culture in Colombia. These words battle homesickness as Fear spinelessly disguises herself as loneliness, stalking thoughts of being physically away from family for another two years. The words transcend time, connecting present decisions with reflections of the past and attitudes towards the future.
One wall avalanches—she recalls and reminds the room of the damned doctor’s lava eyes obeying strict orders to read her script,
“You have three months to live.”
This was supposed to murder him. This was supposed to kill us.
Fisher begins building a fishbowl. He doesn't decide who swims inside of it, he decides how they swim inside of it.
“I could listen to the doctors, abdicate control to the professionals and let the cancer run its course, un-thwarted, or I could go against their advice to give-up and fight back against this cell-multiplying-mutant that’s taken my brain hostage. Instead of cowering in fear, I chose to face my cancer and to fight for my life.”
A burst of snow sends her stumbling. Her soul is suffering a new cold as she concedes to a hidden truth. She clumsily aspires to embrace the arctic in her core while rising to her feet. Shaken, she expectantly reaches for another cigarette to light, but then fumbles to find her flame or even a spark as Fisher's powerful hand almost engulfs the globe of light. So, instead, she furiously gazes out of the window. Her breath sends an angered fog onto the glass.
He is always calm. He maintains his sense of knowing as he lifts his left hand from the ball of light, revealing an illumination to the room and pointing his dooming finger at her. He moves his point to touch, and then manipulate the mist she’s left on the window. His pointer-finger sagely spells out words within the advection. I witness the outside world reading, and I join them in understanding… as I look out, Jake Brown’s salty squint arrives in the room from his boat sailing hastily away from Swansboro’s shore.
Jake’s forehead is the water’s ripple, wrinkling thoughts of comfort and security as Swansboro transitions from a distant spec to a memory on the horizon behind him. With precision, he knows where to find home within the colors of the vanishing point—I notice Jake in the room, and Jake notices her on the boat.
Jake stubbornly dismisses her uninvited presence on the ship as he confidently steers his vessel to follow Fish’s bearings. Straight. Making his own channels, buoyant that the unknown will channel these thoughts into venture and triumph—he powers the positioning of unfamiliar drifts, joining seas together in his mind.
"If you can control your fear, you can also help those surrounding you control their fears."
“They see, Fish. They’re beginning to know.” I think to myself, and he hears.
The cigarette is limp, lingering between her lips. She brings her bite to a taut closure, saliva slowly sinking her teeth through the cigarette, through her lips. She’s forgotten that she wanted to smoke. Fear realizes that she's trapped in a nightmare. Fisher shows no mercy as she begs to be let go; as she begs to accept defeat.
T i m e ‘ s e x p r e s s p a c e melts the snow…
“I’m fucked,” realizes Fear, confronting abrasions between flashbacks and foreshadowing a subsequent move. “I’m found out,” her belly is full of nothingness as it reaches in deeply for something only to return with more of nothing. Her eyes fly loosely between glances at the wet, rippled fan on the ceiling and then at the fatally foreign glass floor. The stainless style of Fisher´s words fashion a fury upon her frontal lobe,
“How does that feel, in your brain?” Fish looks through the round glass and grins.
Face to face and far from facetious, the fight is controlled by a Fish outside of the bowl, a place where Fear's bubbles aimlessly rise and only air is allowed an escape. Fisher controls the bowl. Fear is trapped inside. And the world is looking at her, naked and trembling.
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Jeff, your “Journey to a State of Fearlessness” influences the past, present, and future. Thank you for continually showing us how to conquer Fear since the moment she surfaced her cowardly face on October 17, 2010. You've enlightened us to the attainable power that comes from understanding a desired focus inside of our own head, and you've led us each day in a march of positivity. Your motivation motivates. You've beaten Fear, and you will beat this cancer.
FishStrong - "The absence of fear in the face of insurmountable odds”
