Five years ago, I was diagnosed with an inoperable, rapidly fatal form of cancer. But then I didn’t die.  Instead, I went on a new drug treatment that eradicated my disease in just 12 weeks. Ever since, I have racked up an impressive number of memorable firsts: gone to the Grand Canyon. Seen Niagara Falls. Run a marathon. Written a memoir. Oh, and baked a cheesecake.  Related: Why cancer isn't over after you're 'cured' | Mary Valle  The thing about surviving an experience that by all rights should have killed you is that people tend to think you have returned from the brink with the secret to life. They ask you, full of hope and curiosity, what you’ve learned and what you can impart. And because of a nearly 10-year-old Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie, they kind of expect you to jump out of airplanes.  Well, all right. You want the lesson of getting a diagnosis that historically only grants a handful of months to live? Here it is: don’t jump out of airplanes unless you really, really want to. More importantly, though, get rid of that lamp you never liked. Try the chow fun, even though you always get the lo mein. Buy the shoes in red instead of black. Because let’s be real: whether we’ve experienced a serious brush with death or led a thoroughly charmed, healthy, injury-free existence, living every day as if it’s the last just sounds really exhausting.  Besides, I would like to think my bucket list had any number of lines through it already – that I was seizing life – before I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2010. I had seen the world; I had danced on tables; I had posed nude in a magazine; I had pursued a career I was proud of; I had loved and had my heart broken; I had brought two beautiful children into the world. I was not walking around with blinders on. I had already booked a trip to Costa Rica with friends when the cancer news hit. And I went. It wasn’t until much later, after the rediagnosis, after I was pronounced cancer free, that I noticed the real change in my life had been both subtler and deeper.  I got a life-affirming waffle maker. I don’t know why I’d somehow lived as long as I had convinced that a waffle maker was too extravagant or space consuming and complicated a device to own. Before cancer, I would sometimes awaken on a weekend and dream of waffles, and then settle instead for the runner up breakfast of pancakes. Did you know that you can get a waffle maker at any major retailer for about $25?  Similarly, a few months ago, I was walking through midtown Manhattan with my older daughter, the borough where I live and have raised my children for over a decade, and I made an impulsive decision. I walked us into 30 Rockefeller Center, marched up to a ticket office, and went to the Top of the Rock. I have been talking about doing this since I was child myself, growing up on the other side of the river in New Jersey. It’s not like I had to buy to get a plane ticket to do this. It’s a few subway stops from my house. I just always figured I’d get around to it someday.  This is the thing I have learned, and it not terribly earth shaking or dramatic. It’s that most of us think there will be time for the little things, the things that are in reach. We live our lives confident that we’ll read that book or we’ll hit that Mexican place we’ve heard is good, or we’ll try a V-neck instead of a crewneck, or find a use for that springform pan. We’ll have that lunch with our college roommate we keep postponing. We’ll get to it next week.  And then there comes a day when we may have to consider that no, we won’t. There comes a day when there’s no more time. You may not have experienced anything like this – yet. But my advice is to love yourself enough for the small stuff, and love yourself enough now.  I hope someday to see Machu Picchu. I fantasize about getting my master’s degree. There is a big world full of spectacular things, and I have so much I still want to experience within it. But today, I can make that fried chicken recipe I bookmarked three years ago. Today, I can take 30 seconds to text a friend and tell her I am thinking of her. I can throw away those green socks I never liked and never will. I can download that Nick Jonas song because I happen to like it and I am not ashamed of that, OK?  There is nothing standing in my way – no money to be saved up; no calendar to clear. Life is happening now, and the whole big lesson I got out of almost losing it far sooner than I ever planned is to not put off anything that catches my curiosity or moves my heart.  Anything, however insignificant it seems. The smaller the better, in fact, because of ease and immediacy. And if you see me at the table next to you at the diner sometime, eating waffles, know that you are looking at a woman who is absolutely crushing it on her bucket list.
Take it from a cancer survivor: living each day like it’s your last is exhausting. Do small things that make you happy now instead