Anger, envy are cancers too

Nairobi; Kenya: This week marks the end of October, the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is an annual campaign to increase awareness of the disease.

Cancer is a dreaded disease, and its mention brings to mind pain, endless procedures and expenses on medication, and ultimately death.

The other, day I overheard some people they would rather catch any other incurable disease but not cancer. I was left wondering whether cancer is indeed as horrible as it has been presented.

I know of several other cancers (of the mind) that are equally, if not more, damaging.

Cancer, which is characterised by out-of-control cell growth, comes in 100 different types, each classified by the type of the cell that is initially affected.

Cancer cells uncontrollably grow and do not die.

Unlike regular cells, cancer cells do not experience programmatic death and instead continue to grow and divide. This leads to a mass of abnormal cells that grows out of control.

Just like there are various types of cancer, there exists cancers of the mind that can damage a human being to the core.

In the journey of life, we are faced with different situations that bear unpleasant qualities, in us.

It is difficult to pinpoint when that anger, bitterness, jealousy and spite was born in you.

But you know that it is indeed there and wish you could wipe it away with the stroke of a hand.

The anger materialises as if to help you sort out situations yet it only makes matters worse. The bitterness eats at you and you realise that you need to forgive and hopefully forget if you are ever to walk without baggage.

Jealousy destroys you ever so slowly, and you need to realise that this only serves to drag you down before you wish it away.

Spite makes you irrational and your days are filled with malice and unkindness.

Actually, with breast cancer or throat cancer, you know the enemy and there are medics to help you manage it.

But with the cancer of the mind, you may not even know what you are suffering from.

And even when you do, it all becomes a part of you such that even your friends and family associate that trait with you.

With the bodily cancer, you may have the advantage of a support group where you are showered with love and care.

But with the cancer of the mind, you become this nasty person who earns himself isolation from his loved ones.

Your family may want to avoid you — not because they do not care but because they cannot stand what you have become.

You become like a vicious animal and stop reasoning.

Along the way, you mess up relationships, some of which took years to nurture.

You hinder any form of personal growth and you become an unpleasant person who radiates nothing but the negativity.

Like Maya Angelou said, “Bitterness is like cancer.

It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”