For a cancer survivor, living (well or not) is the best revenge

Somewhere along the way in our News You Can Use culture, good health has taken on the patina of virtue. Like good grades and job promotion, health is seen as bestowed upon those who work for it. There's no excuse for not doing everything you can, not with all the lists of necessary practices in popular magazines, not with all the attention to disease prevention.

The flip side of this is the judgment passed on those who get sick. They must have done something wrong, their diet must be flawed or they are overweight or drink too much or don't drink enough. Weight is the easiest handle for bestowing blame because we can see it and because we have been taught to associate all manner of poor habits with excess weight. But there are other handles. Somebody, somewhere is drinking a latte with whole milk rather than nonfat and someone else is driving three blocks instead of walking.

In November 2006, researchers at Harvard Medical School announced a study finding that the more red meat a woman eats through her 20s and 30s, the greater the likelihood that she will develop breast cancer, particularly hormone-positive breast cancer. Vegetarians all over were patting themselves on the back and feeling quite good. I would have been feeling quite good myself except that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer two years before, breast cancer of the hormone-positive variety -- even though I'd become a vegetarian when I was 21 years old and hadn't knowingly eaten meat since.

I am still a vegetarian. For many reasons, this habit will always be a part of me. And I don't doubt the study. On the whole, people who avoid red meat will most likely benefit. But this particular talisman did not work for me; it did not ward off the evil illness. I resist the impulse to feel betrayed and ask, "If I did everything right, how could this happen to me?" I resist this impulse because I do not believe we earn our illnesses, even the illnesses that are directly the result of personal habits.

We live our lives with whatever mix of things that give us pleasure and steps we take to be responsible, and sometimes we enjoy health and sometimes we get sick. But if we live only within the bounds of responsibility, if we forgo completely the pleasures, we will miss the point of all this striving for longevity, the whole reason for living. And we might get sick anyway.