Which is, of course, advice easier to give than follow.
However, today I was inspired reading the short article about Michael J. Fox in Parade Magazine. When asked about his Parkinson's disease, and in particular what worries him, he said he tends not to worry. "If the bad thing - the worry - happens, or the disease gets to some arbitrary worrisome point, and you've worried about it all along, it's like living through it twice." This is not a direct quote, I've embellished it a good bit, but in a way that it spoke to me. Kind of like the Buddha's 'second arrow' of suffering, but in this case experiencing the optional one before the given one has even arrived.
Though often just recycling bin fodder, I'll sometimes read of some luminary or other pictured on the cover of Parade. Never a huge fan of Mr. Fox, I have followed his career a bit more since his diagnosis with the serious neurological condition. He was born a month earlier than I, and diagnosed about ten years sooner than my MS diagnosis. He is an inspirational man, and his continued work in film, on the cause of Parkinson's research, and as a loving and involved father and husband (as far as I can tell, which, admittedly is not very far), would lead me to give him the 'bump' if I were Stephen Colbert.
If only we could go 'back to the future' to find the cures, or something. What we have is right now, and what we continue to have, are blessings. The opportunity and challenge is to notice them. As true now as it always has been.
I will leave you from this short blog post with a clip from Back to the Future. (Though a guitar player like me, I'm pretty sure his audio is enhanced...): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Cr7kxjSBs&feature=related
