It Only Takes A Moment

Lately, I’ve been listening to the song “It Only Takes A Moment” from the musical Hello Dolly/i>. The song is sung by one of the protagonists who sings how it only took him a moment to fall in love with one of the female leads, Irene Adler in the show. Some of the lyrics are as follows:
“It only takes a moment for your eyes to meet and then, your heart knows in a moment you will never be alone again.”

It’s a beautiful song, but it got me thinking the same can be said for hearing for the first time that you have blood cancer.

"It only takes a moment"

It only takes one moment for everything around you to change. You’re going about your normal day-to-day life, but then learn you have cancer and suddenly nothing is ever the same again.

Your heart does know, it beats faster as you contemplate everything. Or try to anyway.

It’s almost amazing when you think about it, how quickly things can change on a dime. So what do you do? You keep moving forward as best you can. Hope things work out the way they’re supposed to for the better. But it’s still stressful, and daunting.

"As the parade passes by"

Another song in the musical “As the Parade Passes By” has our main character, Dolly Levi, singing about how she wants to be out amongst people again. She’s isolated herself and is lonely.

She sings “...I’ve got a goal again, I’ve got a drive again, I want to feel my heart coming alive again!”

I can relate this to how I felt post cancer. I hermited myself for years. I was so tired, not just physically but emotionally and mentally too. Then I wondered why I felt so lonely. lol.

But this year, I decided I didn’t want to feel that way anymore, it was time to rejoin the human race. I don’t want to waste anymore time. Cancer has already taken so much of it from me. But it took me a while to see that.

Like Dolly, I had to realize and grab the moment and make a decision.

"Hello Dolly"

One of the scenes of the musical showcases Dolly coming back to her favorite restaurant. Everyone there knows her, because she used to frequent it so often in the past. She sings about how she’s back, how nice it is to see everyone and how she’s never going away again.

I think in a way that is where I stand too. I’ve planted my feet firmly in the ground and intend to stay. It’s cool how much life imitates art. But isn’t art just a collection of human experiences shown in different lights/mediums?

The playwright probably had no intention of equating their show to the timeline of having a disease. And when I first watched it, I had no intention of doing so either. But the more I listened, the more experiences I could relate it to.