Fortune Cookie Philosophy

Last night, my wife and I were out walking, and she asked me about finding the meaning of life. As someone who feels he has ran into two major satoris (the decision to be a teacher and the decision to advocate / educate for Parkinson's) and other divine intervention, it seems like I know how to get there, but the truth is that I just know it when it's happening. I know enough not to turn it down (like my friend's son did when he was released from jail and he was offered a ride home from a priest who offered him a job, an apartment, and life coaching - how do you miss that sign or reject that opportunity?). However, I don't always know how to pull it in when its asking me if I appreciate its personal favorite qualities. Then again, sometimes the things we regret never obtaining are bullets we dodged (i.e. the job I applied for where the boss said, "I'll never be satisfied with what you do. Do you still want to work here?" The right answer was no, but I said yes. The interview was horrible. Now, I'm thankful since A) I would have loathed him and B) the for profit school is out of business).

This made me think about my attitude toward life's hardship as an opportunity as opposed to a problem. That made me think about a graduation card I received almost 2 decades ago with this quote from Soren Kierkegaard, who is the bee's knees of existentialism for me (although Nietzsche has his one liners and Sarte has a couple good hits, I never thought much of Heidegger - then again, who thinks about these things other than some oddball like me or an egghead in a lecture hall? That said, The Simpsons had "Camus can do, but Sartre is smarter" and there was a Kierkegaard quote / joke in the first Wayne's World - see below).

Here, I stated how I believe that living a good life and a genuine life will lead to opportunities, but it has to be altruistic - not to get rewards. I'd like to think I have examples, but they may just be coincidences. Who knows? What can possibly go wrong with being a better person, spreading kindness, and not giving in to the negative? In the meantime, I'm also going to go on living a good life and offering Fortune Cookie Philosophy and Kierkegaard quotes.

If you contemplate life and the meaning thereof, then what makes you sure you can figure out who we are or how to find the meaning of life? Have you learned a strategy? Have you found a truth? Is it some grand win, a random series of aligned paths that will take us to where we were meant to go and make us who we are meant to become? If so, what's the difference between relying on playing the i-Ching (which Steve Jobs had nothing to do with) and the one-armed bandits at the casino?

Like tarot cards for the Tao te Ching sect, everything comes down to a chance.to determine the future with hexagrams and lines. Just like palm reading, the interpretation of the future is only a pattern away. Whether it's on turtle shells, hands, or the well-lighted path of the wisp's in Disney's Brave, it's there.

Just like with Monty Hall on Let's Make a Deal, we are left with a choice. Which door will it be ? 1, 2, or 3? Do we win the car, vacation, or booby prize?

Is the answer one of free will or determinism? Can we ever go back for the doors that we missed? Is there a trick to answering this question?

What do I do? Do I dare disturb the universe (T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Afred Prufrock" - goll dang, if that isn't one of the 5 best poems ever)?

With a kiss on the lips and the fingertips, we make our choice on the machine. What option and possibility are we led to? Does a number that looks bigger when it comes to multiple chances actually mean more than a lower number, whose one opportunity to come up big does? Is the possibility really infinite and left to mathematical randomness? Does chaos play a role in how we bring the machine of change to its knees or in how it empties our reserves and leaves us hopeless? Then again, is it all able to be based on a system to trick or manipulate the possibilities with confidence guiding the way?

Are our pre-game and in the midst of the contest routines able to determine our outcome based on what we do and don't do? Must we adjust our batting gloves every time we face a new pitch?

There are so many opportunities and so many advisers. Perhaps all we need to do is believe. Then again, maybe it's about knowing someone. However, it could all be done with regard to where the planets align. Nevertheless, I can't fail to acknowledge that many "true believers" feel there is no prosperity gospel, so just fall into line with Jonathan Edwards' plans for "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" or else. All things will be as they are meant to be in the next life. This fortune game we are attempting to play here on earth is rooted and evil, when we are meant to be about obedience or a life of damnation.

What outlook is best for you? Would you rather be to led to the Promised Land or seek it out, knowing only stories of the gold of the fabled lost city of El Dorado? After all, without evidence, it is only legend. Step forward in a leap of faith. Your fortune is waiting for you, or maybe not, Indy. What can you do except give in to the baddies to save your daddy?

With that, there are jungle snakes and predators looking to devour you. It's one or the other, but unless you pay to play, you never had a chance for winning everything, let alone getting a bit of anything. You might be safe, but you'll never know what it was worth to feel the exhilaration of taking a chance to win it all.

Besides, if it's there, it's meant to be discovered. Perhaps it's waiting for you to make your move. Wouldn't you like to see the gold with your own eyes as you feel it in your hands?

Then again, maybe there's another choice, and perhaps it's as simple as a few typed words. If a horoscope or a fortune cookie could offer us a future, then should we take it? Should we thrust ourselves into its meaning and its possibility, or should we just pass it off as a quirky way to celebrate the end of an Asian dining experience?

Not to sound like Eminem, but "if you had one chance," would you pursue the words that you received in a message that came at the end of a choice that was divided out at the table after one that was divided out to the table after one that was divided out to the restaurant. Of course, someone wrote these random missives in the first place, and a company printed them out. Nevertheless, this arrangement of random words was meant for you or is it all just gibberish that means nothing? You'll never know unless you flow into it to find out for sure.

Do you have the courage to take a chance?

What do you have to lose?

Is it courage or false hope? Are my words the truth or lies? Am I here to send you to your doom and gloom? After all, to be tempted with prophecies of the future is evil, but what if this is part of a mission from God?

In the end, who knows what the truth is? There is no one-size answer, but there is the feeling of being compelled to jump or to halt. To go the wrong way is to ignore the fail safe, but to ignore the opportunity is to squander your chance.

Do what you will in accordance of what you know of the universe's great truth, but be aware that some of these are subtle calls. They're not always a priest in a car or moment of clarity in the Toiyabe Mountains.  Then again, sometimes, they are.

Aspiration Pneumonia and the First Day of Spring Training

            The great American singer John Prine once wrote, “There were many great days and many not so great days. I tried to turn them all into great songs.” As an introspective person and a writer, I believe that. Some days, we’re on Cloud 9, and life is as good as can be. Other days, we feel like crud as bad things happen, which Forrest Gump confirmed that they do. Those aren't fun days, especially when our pain puts other people in worry and pain.

            Since the night my wife and I returned from New Orleans (22 December), I haven’t been well due to a burst of pneumonia that saw me miss a whole lot of everything from Christmas to last weekend. I'm not sure what did me in. Could it have been the guy on the plane running from the back to the front swinging a saddle bag at everyone (really)? How about the famous NOLA cemeteries or the ghost of Marie Laveau or the woman in the witchcraft shop putting a hex on me for taking a photo of her shop? So many possibilities to consider. In the end, it only mattered that I was nailed with horrid nasty lung gunk like some gator was looking to take me out!

            Over that time I didn't feel myself, I spent parts of 6 days in the hospital for the aforementioned pneumonia (which I wrote about HERE) and a second trip that saw me filled with hypoxia and chest crud. Those are not fun at all (fortunately, after tons of tests, there was no pneumonia, sepsis, or zombie virus), nor was not having enough blood for IVs and routine blood. They were going all over my drained self with butterfly needles. I felt so bad for both of us!

            As a “Parkie,” the fear is that people with chest crud will concoct aspiration pneumonia, which is a brutal murderer of our people. And no, I’m not exaggerating (see Michael J. Fox Foundation for more info).

            Put simply, we Parkinson people have trouble swallowing since EVERYTHING in us slows down. When your mom told you to not eat or drink so fast because it would go down the wrong track… yep. That’s it. Stuff goes into the lungs, and bad stuff happens.

            The risk factors other than death (according to the Merck Manual) include:

Impaired cognition or level of consciousness

Impaired swallowing

Vomiting

GI devices and procedures

Dental procedures

Respiratory devices and procedures

Gastroesophageal reflux disease

What makes a lot of respiratory problems worse is our inability to take a whole lot of medications, which I wrote about HERE.

The good thing is that NOW, I feel better. On the first day of Major League Baseball’s spring training, the world is all future and no past, as Lou Boudreau would say. Sure, there's lots of nagging issues, but on the first day of the season, it's all possibility. Why not believe that it's our year and our time to raise the trophy that speaks of greatness and how things go the other way, too?

My wife, family, and friends rallied me out of the hospital on Saturday, and now I’m working through my to-do list. Heck, I even got out walking on the local rails to trail (1.5-1.75 miles of a cool breeze and sunshine) for the first time all year. It wasn't a long walk, nor was it an overwhelmingly scenic walk, but it was a great walk nonetheless. In the end, that's all that matters!

In many ways, I feel glad to be alive and better so I can do all of the great life things I want to be able to do. Going into the CT machine scared me like nothing I've felt in this PD battle. It's hard to explain because generally, I'm positive and / or stoic (except when I'm not), but right there, I wondered about what if it was worse. 
It very easily could, but it wasn't, so like Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson, I go on stronger than I was.
Sitting here now, I know my only choice is to take it to PD and chest crud like the Rock would since we know Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson can do whatever he puts his mind to. You gotta smell what the Rock is cooking.

But even though I feel like this is the it I need to follow, it's not that easy, though Bob Feller had it right.

Thinking about this now, I think about how there’s a scene in the TV show Scrubs where the one character (JD) reflects his friends' lives and medical issues and contemplates what will be their demise (diabetes, blood pressure, and anxiety, if I remember correctly). That's how I felt in the CT. 

At that exact moment, I felt helpless being away from my wife as I thought about my lungs and how I walked into the hospital unable to really breathe (O2 in the 80s – it should be mid 90s). In fact, I felt like the guy in the Salem Witch Trials (Giles Corey) who was pressed to death (though I wasn't screaming for more weight as a show of resistance to a corrupt legal system). What was going on was that I could hardly breathe or speak. Fortunately, they got me back and nebulizered me with lots of TLC and professional care. Those hospital workers rock. Now, they have some fun contraptions and meds to keep me good, and yes, I'm feeling much better. However, prior to that, I was getting winded on 20 yard walks on flat ground... not even including stairs. UGH! That's not a hiker's life!

Now that I got my unconditional release from the hospital, I feel like a new man, but what is to come? After all, my PD journey is only 6.5 years old. I'm sure it has more tricks for me, not to mention things it can take or bills it can generate. 

Here, some people might wonder if my desire to get back on the top of a mountain in the near future an unrealistic expectation or the crossing of a personal scum line that says, “No more?” For me, I say that I might walk slowly, but I’ll do what I have to do to keep going up those 1,000 steps. I’ll draw my goals list and color code it for what I finish today while prioritizing what I can do tomorrow.

Nevertheless, I still know that the potential for future diagnoses and what is lurking under the bed to come for me is scary on a level that makes medical bills seem benign. But let's be real; bills, even with insurance, are still scary all the same. I guess it’s fair to say something will get us all, but at the same time, I’m not ready to be gotten. I have too much to live for, so hit the highway wendigos, chupacabras, and lung nastiness!

It's time for Jimi, Stevie, and me to chop mountains down with the edge of our hands.

Confident - But Not the Demi Lovato Song (Philosophy) REVISITED for September 2018

            In life, things push us around. It’s an unfortunate part of the plan. We don’t have a choice in the matter. Life is filled with conflicts. As writers, we are taught that these conflicts are things like person vs. self vs. others vs. organizations / institutions vs. nature vs. God, etc. As Parkies, we are faced with a beast of a condition, whose one aim is to progress to a point where life is filled with shaking, slowness, physical + mental disabilities, falls, freezing, forgetting, and depression. What's more, its effects mess with the emotional, mental, physical, and financial worlds of all those we love, since they get to come along for the ride.

In much of my life, I’ve found these conflicts. Many people and I experienced bullying when it meant something more than being told something we didn’t agree with (like getting a B on a paper instead of an A). This is not to say that bullying like that doesn't exist or that people who get upset are snowflakes. This is far from true. However, in a world of 140 characters or less, people feel bullied about everything. 

How dare I have to listen to the political views of the punk band Social Distortion. Just play your songs that have NOTHING to do with politics and let me get my mosh on after I instigate a made for social media fight with you.

How dare you not treat me like the king or queen, McDonald's? I will now bad mouth you.

You want real bullying... read Rescuing Riley. Zachary Anderegg's story is a fascinating account of overcoming bullying to become a US Marine and compassionate man.

I’ve seen people call me any name they could to provoke a fight so that I’d retaliate in a way that would allow them to stomp me if I dared try to fight back.

In addition, I’ve wrestled demons in myself for not being good enough or those that plagued me in my younger days when I didn't feel good at all. For much of my life, I’ve lacked confidence in a lot of things. Whether that was getting awards or friends or a better job or approval or a girlfriend or even just through the day, I’ve had lack of confidence filling my head.

Somewhere in this, I found Laurence Gonzales’ book Deep Survival and a lot of positive role models and heroes and started to change. I’ve chosen to find ways to survive and control my own equation. There's also Surviving Survival, which talks about how to come down after our ordeal.

This equation control is something I talk about when helping students with resume writing.

“What makes you better than 99 other people who want the job? Right now when you aren't looking for work actively, you control the equation. You get to think about what goes on your resume and make it pop. If you don’t have it, you volunteer to get it, or you learn it. Now is the time to be ready for the interview.”

When I say it, it makes sense to (at least some of) them, and many of these people already had the confidence and the skills, so it’s not hard for them to get all Nietzsche triumph of the self over obstacles. These people just needed the storytelling expressed out from a strong verb with numbers to tell the Anecdote of the Future Great Employee. I’m sure I helped them succeed because I showed them what they were, but really, that strength was in these people all along. 

Nevertheless, a part of me knows that I aided in this endeavor with my teaching and empathetic expression of life experience.

Here lies the major conflict in my life. I can tell other people about what they have, and when I do, it’s all person-building. This isn’t because I’m working on my karma. It’s true that I am, but deep down inside this person who is now me, I want to see people win the games they’re playing. It’s not that they couldn’t do it without me. It’s just sometimes they need to be told, such as these resume writers or my student who was looking to transfer her memories of Central American missions work to the page OR the teacher whose story was on the page, but he didn’t realize the awesome story he had going. 

Stuff like that is fun to connect to. I love those things. They make me feel better than “rescue me; I’ve got 2 hours until go time, and I haven’t spellchecked this paper, but that’s your job, right?” I know that’s the nature of some education and life (and things the younger me expected of others), but it’s just not the same inner feeling of joy for those people showing the way.

Now 4 months removed from my last class and 9 months since my last day tutoring, that's something I don't miss. Nevertheless, I do miss the students who taught me and learned with and from me. If only there was an option for that, which didn't involve grading papers.

For me, I still like those moments where I succeed with others. Nevertheless, I never did like redirecting through when I have to ask questions like, “How can I help you if you haven’t done the work?” Hopefully, this learning and redirection inspires them to do the work, but in many cases, I’m not sure if it does. Additionally, it takes away from learning time.

The same is true with me. Sometimes, I’m making me better, but other times, I’m still struggling to make me connect on many levels. Sure, I have an awesome wife who loves and supports me, now, and I work for a living, and I have friends as well as a positive outlook, but it’s not like I’m not afraid of heights and rappelling down rock walls like my wife. It’s not like I am a motivated body builder / man of mountain climber coolness and a rock-hard body with persona to match like Mark Twight (maybe after I get some time and it stops raining and I'm done with my book, I’ll start with that). Hell, I’ve got 90 extra pounds around the middle. Does anyone want it? You can have it.

So is it wrong when people look at me crazy when I tell them I'm positive about this crap fest I’ve been dealt, the one that they tell me they’re sorry I have (I appreciate the sentiment; I know it means love, but to me, it’s an opportunity to redirect me and advocate for others, and that’s not a bad thing at all) or joke around despite our conversation dealing with Parkinson’s disease? Trust me; I’m not going to really charge you with a hate crime if you pick on me for being clumsy even though Parkinson’s balance issues keep me from standing on 1 foot without support to slide on my ball hugger underwear in the morning.

This is the conundrum I face because it’s the one conflict in my life I can face. Spinal tap on December 23^rd… sounds like fun. I’ll take 2. Jam that stuff in there. Besides, it sure beats the lethargy, knee pains, and knuckle pain that’s slowing down my 82 words a minute typing game.

This me sitting here typing right now wants to be back in the woods. I don’t want to get worn out every mile on a town rails to trails. I want to do 23 miles around Blue Marsh again like I did before. Sure, Parkinson’s will slow me down, and the tremors will continue, but I want to know what’s permanent me and temporary me. I want more opportunities at that before the next stages come and slow down my game again.

Let’s get real; I want to kick this crap's butt, and I want to be happy and thrive and enjoy things for as long as I can. If you’ve got some of your own nastiness getting you down, I want to send you a hug or positive vibes or show you that you can beat this, too, with a little inspiration. I can’t hug all of you individually or “buy the world a Coke today” like Oasis said when they borrowed a line for the original version of their song "Shakermaker," but know that I feel it.

Know that, but know that even though I don’t want you to feel down, I can’t make you do the Navy SEAL toughness thing of not ringing the bell to quit. When people get it in their mind to quit, the game is over. Navy SEAL instructors always ask if the trainee is sure this is the decision that they want. Even if they choose to go back, it’s said that they don’t last (see Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor). They’re already done. They already quit. Such is life and death and all things in between.

That’s why I look at what I’ve got and say, “I’ve got 2 choices. I can be up, or I can be down. I’ve been really down. I prefer up. The other choice sucks butt.”

I’ve crossed my own personal scum lines. I’ve cried myself silly in the middle days of 2011 with the early days of my symptoms and middle age and lack of success and inability to see a future, and I’ve wondered, “Why the hell am I on this earth? What comes after this pile of crap situation?”

Somehow, it was like then and other times along the way I found that there were more ways to die psychologically and socially inside than just the 3 deaths that both the Mexican and Christian cultures believe we experience.

Those were dark times, but somehow I got through. I’d like to think it was because I was meant to do something after it. All of this suffering has to be for something. You may not like the suffering, but the mission is more important than the person. I believe that, too. 

Many of us get in this dark place, and we don’t see a way out, but there’s always a way out. God and the universe throw fail safes at us all the time. Sometimes we don’t like our rescue from without because we don’t get to save the universe and score the significant other; thus, we are left to regroup our wounds while eating humble pie, but that’s OK; that’s life. Being on the disabled list isn’t bad if we use it to retrain.

And when we think like that, we see the thing is that something will and did get better when we opened ourselves up to that place (like the time I had to abandon my post Air Force life in England). It wasn’t always right away, but there were paths. Did we or I notice them at the time? Like the story of the flood survivor waiting for God to rescue him, but who chose to pass on the boats that were going to take him to safety. Here, we often choose to not look our rescuers in the eye and say, “Yep. I see a winding path to a new me. I’ll take it. No more backward or down. I may go sideways and repeat stuff I didn’t do right, but I’ll be like Rocky in frozen Russia, and I’ll retrain old school to kick ass again.”  

Instead, we wait for the magic Hollywood ending, and the whole place just slowly freezes over leading us to our demise.

 With Parkinson’s, I actually feel like I get something toward a better me with confronting my demons. Somewhere between Michael J. Fox’s “lucky” feeling about getting to live and to advocate and slogans like the cancer campaign “Fight like a Girl,” I’ve found spirit and drive to not take Parkinson’s shit. I’m on 23/6, which says I still have doubts and worries, but I’m working hard to see a good future with what I have.

With that attitude, it confuses a lot of people. This is both for the person I was or the person that some people feel should just roll over and cry to get his pity party because life says we can have 1 (the whole "Harrison Bergeron" make yourself suffer to make someone else feel better about his or her lot in life). 

Sorry, at this moment right now (and every other one), I can’t do that, even though I’d like to milk it for 3-hour back massages or bundt cakes with love. Yes, my humor may be a little odd and inappropriate sometimes, but I prefer that coping mechanism to those of the bad old days when I sat around waiting to be trounced by life’s obstacles…

I know humor isn't always possible, but when it is, it's good. That said, there will be those bad days will hit me like a ton of bricks, too. That’s the nature of our game. However, right now, I need to be strong so I can carry this positive vibe over to make sure those next troubles aren’t as bad as they could be.

Right now, I’m not that 18-year old guy in Air Force Basic Training waiting to fall on the rope swing before even taking the rope. I’m riding this fire inside me through the shaking foot and hand and all the other inner symptoms to some kind of a happy life for as long as the universe and medical science allows me to keep it.

But thinking like this seems so odd to people. I’m not sure why. Like I said, maybe it’s the old me versus the new me, but now, it’s like I have to put out a disclaimer, "It's not like I have my head in the sand that I don’t have a progressive, incurable degenerative neurological disorder, but I just need to do and be happy with the time I have left. I know what might be and is coming. I’d just prefer to live happy right now."

Actually, it’s not like I have to think about what statement I’d make; I do put out the disclaimer to tell this to people while explaining Azilect versus the enzymes to create safe passage for dopamine like it was an episode of The Walking Dead.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called David and Goliath. which I used to teach. In it, he talked about how people's lives made them more resilient to adversity. Thinking like this, could some crappy breaks and out of control random incidents not make us stronger to life's poop sandwich?

Hmm... 

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are the stages of grief. Each of us face things differently. I’m not all people. I’m just me. Many people have it better than me, and they still kick Tim McGraw “Live like You Were Dying” ass that I aspire to do and be.

However, for those people who are in the first 4 stages of their grief and the pain of their suffering (or the suffering you feel watching someone else), know that I believe in you moving to that 5^th stage of grief that is acceptance. That doesn't mean lay down and die. It means live as long as possible. Besides, you were going to die before Parkinson's. That hasn't changed.

Just remember, there’s a lot of strength over here. I only hope the words of my essay can encourage you to find your own path over here.

Besides, who knows? For all I’m helping you now, you might need to be the one to encourage me when I get hit with the next tidal wave that is going to try to drown me with something I can’t do. When that time comes, I hope you can be my inspirational friend.

Right now, for all of us, the key is to spread confidence, to believe in ourselves, and to be there for others, however long and in whatever way we can. Even if it's just telling people what not to do, we're still helping others learn from our mistakes.

All of these things mixed together are some really good things.