Amanda Dickson

Isn’t that what people say when the doctor finds a lump and for hours, maybe days, they think it might be cancer? Well, this time it wasn’t people – it was me.  And I came terrifyingly close to joining the club nobody wants to be a member of – women living with breast cancer.

The scare lasted 32 hours.  32 hours from the time the nurse called me to tell me the radiologist found something on my mammogram that didn’t look right to the time I walked out of the IHC Breast Care Center knowing what they saw was a lymph node and not a tumor.  32 sleepless hours during which all of my self-talk about not getting worked up over what could be nothing had no desired effect on me.  32 hours of worst case scenarios, worrying about how Aaron and the children would manage without me, already starting to miss the life I was still living.

“I have a new lease on life,” I’ve heard people say, and said myself in a facebook post this morning.  My friends kidded me that I ought to stop leasing and buy already.  But none of us can do that, can we?  We can only rent this fragile life for awhile, and we don’t get to set the terms.  My mom used to say, “The old must die but the young may.”   I’m neither old nor young, but I know today in a visceral way that I want more – more time with people I love, more time to learn and write and make a fool out of myself.  I want more of all of it, and I commit to you and myself today to do the only thing I can do to give myself more – waste less.

I will spend less time putting the boys off with “Well, maybe later.” If they want to go to the playground or McDonald’s or a park, and we’re not busy, that’s it.  We are going!  I will spend less time with people who treat me with anything less than kindness and respect.  Life is too short and there are too many other people.  I will spend less time worrying that my husband doesn’t find me attractive any more and open my eyes to the not-so-subtle way he looks at me.  I will say “yes” whenever I’m inspired to and “no” most of the time, both without guilt or apology.  I will love, love, love and fall flat on my face doing it, and I won’t care one bit. 

Thank you, God, for this day.  Thank you for this sweet life.  Thank you for my brother Grant, who isn’t really my brother, but after 17 years on the air together, feels like blood to me.  Thank you for the sound of my children in the background whenever I talk to Aaron on the phone.  Thank you for Mexican food and curling irons and tanks filled with gas.  Thank you for emails from my father, time with Laurel at Barnes and Noble and tickets to see U2.  Thank you for journals and heart felt compliments, both given and received.

I have never felt so in love with my life as I do on this day, the day after I found out the lump was a lymph node.

People talk to me all the time about how we need more bipartisanship in government and more civility in the media.  I agree – on both counts.  And I have a glimpse today as to why we don’t have it.

Because when we are presented with the moment when we can take the higher road, think better thoughts about people, tell the better story – we don’t.  Case in point – the story this week about the Matheson brothers.

Let me admit to you that I have great personal respect for both Scott Matheson Jr. and his brother, Representative Jim Matheson.  Scott was a professor of mine in law school many moons ago.  He taught civil procedure and the 1st amendment, and he taught ethics – not in an actual class – but by example.  When I heard that he was nominated to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, I was delighted.  He may be the best legal mind ever nominated to such a position from this state.  And then I heard the next question – did President Obama nominate him just to buy his brother’s vote on health care?

Really?

I know the timing.  I know the pressure.  I’m not quite as naive as I look.  But whether you agree with Jim Matheson on the issues or not, has he ever done anything to make anyone believe he is so unethical that his vote on such an important matter, or any matter, could be bought with a job for his brother?  There is no question we can’t ask as members of the media, and no allegation we can’t level as political opponents.  I get it.  But just because we can ask the question, doesn’t mean we should – because when we do, we change the news.  We change the discussion.  We choose sensation over civility.

I don’t make the decisions about what stories are covered or how they are covered, but I do believe we can lift the tone and the service of our reporting by lifting our intentions.  What was our intention in asking if the vote was bought?  We knew the answer would be “NO!!!!”  So . . . what was our intention?  To stir it up.  To suggest a scandal, which we believe will lead to bigger ratings than being respectful would.  What would our intention have been if we didn’t ask the question?  To show respect where respect is earned, to value civility, to lift the level of our discourse, and let the ratings be what they will.

It happens one decision at a time.  That’s how the media becomes more civil.  That’s how politics becomes more bipartisan.  In one difficult moment, someone who is in a position to do so makes the right decision, even if it may lead to uncomfortable justification after the fact.  “No, I’m not a wimp.  That’s not news.  Unsubstantiated malicious suggestion is not news.”

Then the rest of us applaud.  That’s our job. 

And the snowball begins to pick up steam.