Live A Little

The point of this week's editorial, inspired by the story of Tim Fuller, is simple: The time to live your life is now.

The time to abandon your hopes for a better past is now. The time to focus on what's important in life and live the rest of it to its fullest is now.

Fuller, the longtime park ranger at Camp Wooten, faces an uncertain future from a rare form of cancer that doctors have been unable to send into permanent remission (see this week's Heart Beat column).

His friends and family are hoping to raise enough money through a community fundraiser this weekend to send Fuller and his family to Disneyland.

At first glance that may sound a bit trite. Most fundraisers for patients like Fuller are for life-saving medical treatment or other expenses the impacted household can't afford.

But we believe that in this case sending the Fullers off to what could be their last or one of their last vacations as a whole family is the right idea, particularly since Fuller has inspired so many other local cancer patients with a glasshalf full attitude towards the disease they share.

"He has touched a lot of people in his life," said Liz Philips, a close family friend who is helping put on the fundraising event. "He has inspired a lot of people to search their hearts and find what they believe is important. In Dayton, we need heroes like that."

At the next-to-last Relay For Life in Dayton, Fuller told others living with cancer and their families that despite the hardships from having a disease with so many uncertainties, it was the best thing that ever happened to him, Philips recalls.

She describes Fuller as someone who has always lived life to the fullest and is certainly not going to stop doing that in the face of his most difficult challenge.

Fuller has found welcome support from a men's group in his congregation at Community Bible Church and one look at the way he interacts with his daughters shows he's closer to them than ever.

What has shifted in Fuller, Philips said, is what "living life to the fullest" means to him as a family man. The answer to that is simple too: being with loved ones as much as possible and continuing to hope in the best outcome.

"The setting for a minor miracle is difficulty," Philips quoted a saying she's heard. "The setting for a great miracle is impossibility."

It's worth contributing to the Fuller family benefit just to see the smiles on their faces in the pictures we hope they'll bring back - his wife Kelly and daughters Courtney and Kinsey, who are just at that perfect age to meet Mickey and friends.

But why limit ourselves to living vicariously through the Fullers' experience?

Isn't it time we all turned our attention to what's important in our lives, get our heads out of our past, forgive those who've upset us and focus on making the best of the rest of our days?

Isn't it time to polish off some of our closeted dreams and make them a reality while we still can?

Of course we can't do everything in this life time, but at least we can shift our attention from the things that can hurt us to the things that can heal us. Some believe that focusing on adversity actually stimulates the growth of malignant cells in our bodies and much can be cured with a positive mindset.

A mindset that can help some overcome medical challenges can be a great approach to life in general. Our time here is way too short to dwell on what could have been or should have been or would have been.

It's time to follow Fuller's example and get off the fence.

Carpe diem.

Seize the day.