If you look around, the chances are good someone you know has had, or will have, some form of cancer in their lifetime. Even in my meager 35 years here on Earth, friends, family, peers and counterparts have been hit with the dreaded news that they had cancer.

This year was particularly tough, as several of my students had family members diagnosed with cancer.

What is amazing to me, though, is the fortitude the families show through what can only be described as harrowing therapy and treatment. It's as if they have collectively agreed to beat it together, day by day.

Too often, we become entrapped in our day-to-day life; never stopping to pay attention to what life is really about. These cancer patients and their families, however, have learned to grab each day from the earliest sunrise and cling to the last sunbeam before nightfall arrives.

By doing so, the days are filled with laughter, tears, smiling and living life the way it is meant to be lived: full speed ahead with all engines running.

Why do we, as healthy cancer-free humans, fail to see the message? Is it because our clients are more important than our children? Maybe it's because those darn tests just have to be graded and turned back tomorrow. Perhaps it's because paying the bills is more important than paying a visit to our relatives, or that our houses being cleaned is more important than our conscience being clean.

No. I think the simple answer is that none of these things get done because most of us are afraid. We are afraid of opening our heart for fear of rejection.

Maybe too many of us have begun to believe that we are our jobs and careers instead of using our jobs and careers to help others.

The sad reality is most of us don't know what real fear is. If you want to know what real fear is, why don't you ask the single mother stricken with breast cancer, or the father that has to stand by helplessly while his 9-year-old daughter fights leukemia.

Fear for us is losing a job or losing our standing in society. Fear for these folks is truly a matter of life or death.

One of my favorite movies is "The Shawshank Redemption." In it, Morgan Freeman has one of the greatest lines ever delivered - not just in a movie but in life as well. He tells himself "You can get busy livin' or get busy dying." That's what we are supposed to take and learn from cancer patients and survivors. It's time to get busy living.

What haven't you done today because you were afraid of taking a chance? Were you afraid to defend yourself for fear of being chastised?

Maybe you were afraid of asking someone out for fear of rejection or afraid of starting that home-based business you've been dreaming about for years. Are you afraid of what your friends will say?

There is a song that is currently out by Tim McGraw called "Live Like You Were Dying." He wrote it for his father, former pitcher Tug McGraw, who died of brain cancer. Tug's famous phrase was "You Gotta Believe" while a pitcher for the New York Mets. Apparently his son understood his father's zest for life and living, as captured in the lyrics by McGraw.

Maybe it's time we all learned to live like we were dying. Thanks for showing me the way, survivors.