I Joked About Getting Older Until I Got Cancer

Paying Rent on Borrowed Time

Before cancer, birthdays were something I half-jokingly complained about. Another year older. More gray hair. Another reminder that I wasn’t quite as fast on my bike as I used to be. I’d make the obligatory jokes about celebrating my 30th birthday for the twentieth time, and like most athletes navigating a midlife crisis, I’d wonder how much longer I could keep up this triathlon thing.

Then I got cancer. Twice in two years, actually - prostate cancer followed by Stage 3B colorectal cancer. And suddenly, birthdays became something else entirely.

The first birthday after my diagnosis arrived with a weight I hadn’t anticipated. Friends and family gathered, brought cake, sang the song. Everyone smiled a little too brightly, hugged a little too long. I could see the unspoken relief in their eyes: He made it to another one.

After the second diagnosis, I felt even more like an imposter at my own birthday celebration. Six months earlier, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to that milestone.

I’m sure others wondered, too.

Cancer changes your relationship with time. Before my diagnosis, birthdays marked the passage of years in a vague, abstract way. Sure, I was getting older, but that timeline stretched comfortably into a distant, hazy future. After cancer, each birthday became something more concrete - less a marker of age and more a testament to survival. Each candle on that cake represented not just a year lived, but a year earned.

There’s a famous quote often attributed to Marian Wright Edelman: “Service is the rent we pay for being alive.” I never fully grasped what that meant until cancer forced me to reckon with my own mortality. When you’re told you have a life-threatening disease, you start asking different questions. Not just How long do I have? but What have I accomplished? and What am I doing with the time I’ve been given?

I still don’t have all the answers, but I know that each and every trip around the sun comes with responsibility. If service is the rent we pay for living, then surviving cancer twice means I owe a hell of a lot of back rent.

This year, I thought a lot about all the people who didn’t get another birthday. Terry, my running announcer friend who succumbed to colon cancer. Lauren. Derrick. Rich. The countless others I’d met in waiting rooms and infusion centers who fought just as hard as I did but didn’t get the same outcome.

Why did I get more birthdays when they didn’t?

There’s no good answer to that question. What I learned instead is that survivor’s guilt isn’t something you overcome; it’s something you channel. Every birthday now comes with an obligation to make it count, not just for myself but for everyone who didn’t get another one.

So yes, birthdays hit different after cancer. They’re no longer about getting older or making self-deprecating jokes. They’re not about the number of candles or whether I can still fit comfortably into my tri suit. Each birthday is now a promise—to live more intentionally, to serve more purposefully, to pay my rent with interest.

I celebrate differently now. I don’t just blow out candles and make a wish; I take inventory. I count the people I love and make sure they know it. I assess whether I’m spending my time on things that matter or just killing time until the next MRI or CT scan. I ask myself if I’m paying my rent or just squatting.

Some cancer survivors say they’re grateful for their diagnosis because it taught them to appreciate life. I’m not quite there.

Cancer sucks.

But I am grateful for the birthdays that follow, not because they came easily (they don’t), but because they come with clarity.

Each birthday candle now represents more than another year older. It’s another year to serve. Another year to pay rent on this borrowed time. Another year to make good on the unspoken promise I made to myself, to my loved ones, and to everyone who didn’t get this chance: to make every mile matter.

So bring on the cake. Sing the song. Count the candles. I’m not celebrating getting older anymore.

I’m celebrating the opportunity to pay my rent for another year.