She stood there in the middle of a blue wooden stage, nervously clearing her throat, her eyes flickering amidst the sharp shadows, blinking once, blinking twice at a crowd that stood in silence, respecting her presence. “I am a 2nd time cancer survivor, and the cancer has taught me a lot, follow your heart, no matter what, follow your heart, always.” She sung songs of hope, of cure, of candles, of tomorrows.

It was a regular Saturday afternoon, sleeping in late, maxing my credit cards, whining about the Michigan weather, lunch at Indian buffet and then something. That something changed the meaning of today for me. Relay for life, organized by American Cancer Society . And I just don’t mean changed my today as in June 22nd, 2008, I really meant that it changed how I would look at my everyday todays.

We all walked amidst all the thousand candles covered in golden luminaries, all sketched in colors with names of Cancer survivors, Cancer fighters and Cancer victims. We were not just a crowd of three hundred people walking in silence on the path of hope for Cancer cure but we were accompanied by thousand others whose aspirations sat on our shoulders while we walked. Aspirations of a better tomorrow. Aspirations of a tomorrow.

We all stood under the dusky skies, unsurpassed by the beeping time, uninterrupted by the Saturday hypes, choosing to walk for life over our regular Saturday sundries. “Dear daddy, we miss you”, “Age: 12 years, cancer survivor since 10″, “In loving memory of Smita Masi”, one by one we walked by each life loved and commemorated.

Tonight, we might not have held hands or shed tears, we might not have shared memories in silence, we might not have looked at the sky with our hands joined together in search of answers but we celebrated, we laughed, we danced and we laughed some more. Because while we raised money to find cure for cancer, we appreciated in awe, a guitar player fifty feet over our heads, we smiled at the idea of auctioning cutesy mannequin heads, we cheered along beautiful henna carved in our hands and celebrated. We celebrated those who are fighting, who did. We celebrated those who had won the war and those who would. We celebrated at the idea of hope that in a few years no being would have to hear the three words “you have cancer”.

And we did know that hope will change to cure someday, we did know we needed to love our todays, we did know that in life, all there was to do was to live.

In life, all there was to do was to live. And happy.