RIP John McCain. In Death, You Began the Journey to Save the Republicans from Trump. Long Live the Resistance.

NOTE - the second half of this was originally written before his burial. Obviously, the things at the beginning were added to it. 

We are living in historic times. Today, Cory Booker risked being thrown out of the Senate for releasing confidential e-mails on Brett Kavanaugh's judicial feelings on racial profiling and abortion. Yes, he's a potential Presidential candidate, but desperate times call for definite responses. Like or hate his politics, you have to respect his decision to put it all on the line while the partisan status quo rushes forward Trump's Supreme Court nominee.

That said, Kamala Harris has been incendiary on taking the nominee to task as well.

The future will not wait with so much at stake... such as whether a Supreme Court nominee feels Trump could pardon himself for his own crimes. 

But Kavanaugh is "empathetic" to those people not like him. In his own magnanimous words:

"I understand for example, well, to start, I understand the situation of homeless people because I see them on a regular basis when I’m serving meals."

Yesterday, an anonymous senior White House staff member wrote an op-ed for the New York Times.

It said the following (as well as other things):

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The majority of the essay was about how Trump's own team has to babysit him and keep him from signing orders that could mess up the world.

With a "President" who is hesitant to reign in Moscow, it's scary to think about Russia telling the U.S. it is prepared to attack an area in Syria where American troops patrol.

Prior to John McCain's death, the following last letter was released saying this (as well as other things):

Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.

We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.

Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.

Farewell, fellow Americans. God bless you, and God bless America.

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Today, Twitter ejected Alex Jones rather than allow itself to be a platform for his conspiracy hate. Yesterday, he tried to instigate Marco Rubio, who didn't bite.

"I know you've got to cover them, but you give these guys way too much attention," Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We're making crazy people superstars. So, we (are) going to get crazier people."

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After what the Trump fans called the FLIGHT 93 ELECTION (the linked article mirrors the alt-right with the alt-left in how they are both choosing to disrupt politics as usual with radical change - and not in a good way), there are 2 takes on whether McCain's funeral was a resistance event... FOR people to stand up for necessary change and AGAINST radical change, but rather to collaborate to make things better in a taking back the Republican party kind of way (from the Breitbart / Hannity / Alex Jones gangs). As the latter article says:

For those of us who’ve never been Republicans, it’s easy to say that perspective is wrong. For those who are, it must be a genuinely difficult choice. But it’s a choice that has been made — in 2018, America will either elect a Congress that continues to bolster Trump’s regime or it will elect one that tries to erode it. Those resisting Trump are pushing for one kind of Congress, and those not pushing for an anti-Trump Congress aren’t resisting Trump.

With the next event in the Trump resistance being THIS explosive book Fear (which Trump talked to writer Bob Woodward about HERE), I feel it's a call to take back our country. Whether that classifies as resistance or not, it may not be for the radical left, like we often view protest, but it is a declaration against the insane right.

The same can be said for the intentions of the 2017 Women's March and the March for Science, though this holds more power.

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In a world where Brett Kavanaugh's history is deliberately hidden, to fight against a rush job confirmation with so much on the line (pre-existing conditions), the Republican force to push him into a lifetime position, is the correct thing to do. We don't need more time. We've had enough. Eject him from the position before he gets to it and can allow Trump to Pardon himself. Prepare the 25th Amendment to remove an out of control man from a seat of power. This isn't the WWE. This is real life.

"RESIST MUCH; OBEY LITTLE."

WALT WHITMAN

Meghan McCain (typed speech here)

John McCain was defined by love. This love of my father for my mother was the most fierce and lasting of them all, Mom. Let me tell you what love meant to John McCain and to me.

His love was the love of a father who mentors as much as he comforts. He was endlessly present for us. And though we did not always understand it, he was always teaching. He didn't expect us to be like him. His ambition for us, unmoored from any worldly achievement, was to be better than him, armed with his wisdom and informed by his experiences, long before we were even old enough to have assembled our own.  

As a girl I didn't appreciate what I most fully appreciate now; how he suffered and how he bore it with a stoic silence that was once the mark of an American man.

I came to appreciate it first when he demanded it of me. I was a small girl, thrown from a horse and crying from a busted collarbone. My dad picked me up. He took me to the doctor, he got me all fixed up. Then he immediately took me back home and made me get back on that very same horse. I was furious at him as a child, but how I love him for it now.

My father knew pain and suffering with an intimacy and immediacy that most of us are blessed never to have endured. He was shot down, he was crippled, he was beaten, he was starved, he was tortured and he was humiliated. That pain never left him. The cruelty of his Communist captors ensured he would never raise his arms above his head for the rest of his life. Yet he survived. Yet he endured. Yet he triumphed. And there was this man who had been through all that with a little girl who simply didn't want to get back on her horse.He could have sat me down and told me that and made me feel small because my complaint and fear was nothing next to his pain and memory. Instead, he made me feel loved. "Meghan," he said in his quiet voice that spoke with authority and meant you had best obey. "Get back on the horse." I did. And because I was a little girl, I resented it. Now that I am a woman, I look back across that time and see the expression on his face when I climbed back up and rode again, and see the pride and love in his eyes as he said "Nothing is going to break you."

For the rest of my life, whenever I fall down, I get back up. Whenever I am hurt, I drive on. Whenever I am brought low, I rise. That is not because I am virtuous, strong, resilient, it is simply because my father, John McCain, was.

When my father got sick, when I asked him what he wanted me to do with this eulogy, he said, "Show them how tough you are." That is what love meant to John McCain.

Barack Obama (full speech HERE)

“It’s a politics that pretends to be brave, but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”

Joe Biden (speech quotes HERE)

"It wasn't about politics with John. He could disagree on substance, but the underlying values that animated everything John did, everything he was, come to a different conclusion. He'd part company with you if you lacked the basic values of decency, respect, knowing this project is bigger than yourself."

Lindsey Graham (best friend in the Senate)

George W. Bush

"We are better than this. America is better than this."

Larry Fitzgerald (football player)

After hearing all of these speeches, I wonder what Putitn's speech will be like at Trump's funeral. I can't imagine too many other people other than Vince McMahon coming (since Trump's NFL knee comments benefit him the most). 

I like to think of myself as a middle of the road, slightly to the right guy. Sometimes I lean right. Sometimes I lean left. I have no use for the garbage peddled by outlets like (what has become of) Slate and (what has always been) Breitbart, who take their extremes to never be happy with anything except for what caters to their every further to the side whim. That said, our resident Twitter News Network is still the worst of all the CRAP NEWS outlets when it comes to finding ways to deride anyone who doesn't tow it's party line. This is really bad with their thoughts on McCain's contributions to America. For instance, reactions like THIS made me ecstatic that McCain did THIS.

It's one thing to not like a person. It's another thing to tarnish the office you work in with intentional disrespect toward a fellow government servant after he / she dies. This is why I WILL NOT RESPECT a  de facto President who can't respect his position.

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We can't always get what we want, no matter what side we're on, as the Rolling Stones sang, but Obamacare went on, even if the individual mandate later vanished, as did the birth control mandate. However, before it did, McCain tried to force debate in a utilitarian way - not just whoever is in charge at the minute gets whatever he / she wants.

McCain was a Republican who knew that sometimes it costs money to get the right things. I can imagine this "maverick" wore his RINO (Republican in Name Only, as they called him) tag with pride, crossing the aisles to save the filibuster to debate Bush 2's judicial nominees and to create an immigration plan. Hell, he even stood against his friend Lindsey Graham's plan when Trump was in his by any means necessary, destroy ACA / Obamacare as fast as possible (as well as anything else Obama did).

This is a great expression of McCain's fight to force debate on a plan that mandates coverage for pre-existing conditions (something that my Parkie self can and does fight for). In the same way that he didn't like the party line vote for Obamacare, he sure didn't like being dragged back to symbolically be the person to destroy it. Why make the same mistake twice just to obey his theoretical party-line master?

Yes, McCain may have voted for things that came next (as some people attacked him for), but at least he created debate first... not caving into partisan politics and step in line with the blowhard in charge (or else - no matter who that is - from the right or left). Real leaders know that very few decisions need to be made immediately, and if they don't, the point it to ponder.

For all of his disagreement with Bush 2 and Obama, they will speak in his honor at his funeral this week.

Despite their differences, Obama still said THIS about his one-time opponent, even after McCain caved to his party's ideology to think he had a better chance to get elected (even taking Sarah Palin onboard to completely sink his ship instead of his choice of Joe Lieberman).

Despite their differences, W said THIS to eulogize his opponent.

Lots of people who weren't aboard the McCain train said nice things. As for the "president," Trump had to be made to fly the flag at half mast.

McCain, though running for election against Obama, once took down a racist making stupid comments to defend Obama. He also braved the party-line hatred to honor the man who would be president when it came time to concede. And yes, they traded barbs along the way with McCain's inability to know how much property he owned being used against him, but in the end, they mended fences.

Because that's what civil people do.

In a world where people who never served try to vilify McCain for his time in POW Hell, John survived those horrible days with permanent injuries. I'm not sure how long it would take ass clowns who attacked his character (like Milo) to scream "Do it to Julia," but the fact is McCain endured torture, came to oppose torture, and still had to deal with barbs like that while being accused by W's campaign of being too angry and reactionary to lead the nation (and Obama's campaign of being so old he might die in office - then again, the GOP did that, too - more on Kelli Ward later).

AUTHOR'S NOTE - even in the eulogies, much was made of McCain's "famous" temper.

That said, if you're a former POW, like James Stockdale (who never gave in), have at. That said, Stockdale respected McCain for his years in that nightmare. If you're so inclined to believe the smear merchants, keep on keeping on. That's what you're inclined to believe, and you have the right to believe what you want.

This is still a free country where you're allowed to think for yourself, even if it's to spread hate to encourage an all out holy war (though Wilders is Dutch, there's enough American whackos that would have came out to play on THIS - see this about Pamela Geller's American Freedom Defense Initiative's 2015 Texas soiree than ended with a security guard shot and two attackers killed).

Shouldn't there be underground Fight Clubs so these people who want their extremist crap can take each other out instead of hurting the rest of us?

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For the rest of us, just use your rights to believe what your eyes see... not what the party line and conspiracy nonsense tells you to believe.

As the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times said:

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

UNFORTUNATELY, the partisan right looks at this act to restore dignity to the administration (which it stands with and for) as TREASON and demands the writer quit.

It's like they want the ship to sink.

Mind you, losing the House and / or Senate in fall will ensure the demise of the Republican party as those who are a part of it know it to be. In a country that needs many voices and legitimate middle of the road debate, for either the GOP or the Democrats to go off the rails, we would sink further into the swamp.

This can't be.

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That said with opposition like those in charge, sometimes, I'd like to have my own restaurant to keep people out when they can't play nice with others. Let's face it; some people's money just isn't worth it. Then again, some companies make money to stand up for their ideological causes, whether we agree with them or not. For those who feel hate for it, cut off your Swoosh. The money is in the bank.

You don't have to pay to play anymore, but there are plenty more who will, and many of them are Nike's target audience as opposed to many opponents who weren't.

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That said, for the self righteous, just remember, it's OK to protest when it's for slights to Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Trump, not his enemies. I may not be a Kaepernick fan on or off the field, but he has his 1st Amendment right to make a political stance for his cause. People have the right to tune out and not buy, but this is America... not partisan fueled outrage. While I don't support all of what he's saying, I realize why he does. Oh yeah, this is a great ad campaign that must have inspired Senator Cory Booker.

BTW - this is a great editorial on the situation.Historically, see Muhammad Ali's conscientious objection and Curt Flood's "well paid slave statement."

When you look at most of McCain's haters, they were either harder right (a respectable place to be since they've at least rationalized their beliefs as I have my own and they stand by them when they make sense) or downright "crazy" (a place unworthy of respect because it defends thee old cause no matter what - let's call it Palinland, where one minute, you're ready for war with Russia and the next, they want to hang out with you).

Ben Folds / Nick Hornby - Levi Johnson's Blues

In a world with an administration that hates the McCain point of view and appoints candidates to head the EPA on the basis that they would never do this (SEE VIDEO BELOW), I'd love to own a Chinese restaurant so that if I had to serve people like Sanders (which this new Supreme Court said I don't have to do - provided it goes against my core values), I could bring out the new and improved pu pu platter to people like her and KELLI WARD who somehow think McCain's choice to go off meds and DIE was aimed at her campaign. Oh, to live in Arizona so I could at least vote against her.

In the end, John McCain was my favorite politician who lived in my lifetime. He made a difference for many people. What's more; he chose to die with dignity, calling off the fight against cancer treatment and choosing to shuffle off this mortal coil on his terms. Politics aside, we can look at a beautifully imperfect life and say, "He made a difference."

It sure beats letting a draft dodger tell us what isn't heroic as he gets bought and sold by the KGB and the US really and truly needs to be made great after we sanitize this administration's office.

Joe Biden / Cory Booker 2020.

"You Are All A LOST Generation" / When "the Pursuit of Happiness All Seems a Bore"

RIP to all those who have died from suicide. This is for you.

After World War 1, Gertrude Stein told a bunch of writers, to include Earnest Hemingway, that they were all a "lost" generation. The war had done them in. They were now trying to find meaning in France. They did this with a lot of alcohol, deep conversations, and a completely new way of expressing their ideas through various art mediums. 

As for, Gertrude Stein, she was trying to find meaning in these men. Alice B. Toklas was trying to find meaning in Stein, but she didn't know how to express this, so Stein wrote a book about how cool she was from Alice's perspective. In the end, they both felt like hanger-ons (Stein with the talent, Toklas with the wives). 

Some people will say that the book was a literary achievement. I rank it with painful works like Melville's "Bartleby the Scribner" and Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. After reading the latter, I asked my English teacher, who told me to read it, what it was about, and he was as clueless as I was. Simply put, I think it was a bad drug fantasy that made less sense than William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. The latter was at least a walk through the dangers of heroin, though in a very sleazy crime, sexually-violent kind of way, which is cool when we're young (I read it last at about 25). This couldn't be said for Brautigan . Fortunately, I resold both of those books. 

Then, there's Catcher in the Rye, which I would have loved at 16, I wanted to feed Holden Caulfield to the sharks when I read it at 30. If I read it now, I'd be the old guy telling him off for being so full of his self righteousness. To this day, it's the only book I taught that I couldn't finish, which says something since I also taught Nicholas Sparks' A Walk to Remember to atone for teaching 1984 to the girls in my 10th grade class who hated it (I will admit to liking some of his movies).

I just can't put Stein with great characters of the time like Joe Christmas in Light in August or Daisy and Gatsby in Fitzgerald's work of the same name. William Carlos Williams gave us Spring and All as the writing manifesto accompaniment to the riot ballet that was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. TS Eliot provided The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ("in the room the women come and go talking of Michaelangelo"), and Pound put his own touch on The River Merchant's Wife ("I desired my dust to be mingled with yours"). 

But Stein gave us 2 things:

1) A woman who sat back and watched. Perhaps the hidden sexuality is the trick here, but even then, Toklas is empty. It's not like little girls want to be her or we would be celebrating it now like I did with other female lives. It's not like she's breathing open sexuality like Anais Nin did. If I'm missing something, please tell me.

2) The name of the literary group and the quote about "The Lost Generation."

From this post WW1 generation we got a lot of sadness and pain. When he wasn't talking about bull-fighting, tying flies for trout fishing, drinking wine, or crying over how Lady Brett loved  but couldn't love Jake Barnes (his "problem" turned her into a woman who couldn't date him, but still confided her dalliances to him), Hemingway wrote short stories like "A Clean Well-Lighted Place:"

Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine. 

Nothing like a little nihilistic meaningless in the evening, eh?

Thinking back on how that group transcended and eventually became the generation before mine, it makes me wonder how revolutionary it was for the Rolling Stones to talk about "happy" pills in "Mother's Little Helper." Even today, with regard to the existential dilemma of how "the pursuit of happiness all seems a bore," this song just runs counter to the idea of free living and joyful obtaining. Nevertheless, for every couple at Sandals (like my wife and me), there's someone crying about needing to get back to reality and his "routine."

Really. We encountered one of these people.

Talk about First World Problems!

I come from the generation that grew to love Kurt Cobain. Kurt, who took Hemingway's nihilism and found a social / political rebellion with it as he exploded onto the scene, is said to be the last rock star, and in some ways, that's probably true. For people my age, he made us feel our problems needed expressed (and they should be), but other than the cathartic release, he never provided the answer. Instead, he married Courtney Love, and well.... he died by his own hand (by the way, I am fortunate enough to have seen Nirvana in 1991 before "Smells like Teen Spirit." They were that good).

So it goes.

Now, in the years since then, a time that our angst and ennui has been expressed in a myriad of musical and literary ways, so many of us are part of a "DEAD" generation. We lack interests. We struggle to find meaning. We consume instead of create. We see no end game. We're just alive, eating, breathing, bathrooming, sleeping, and drifting through this world (this is all generations - not just the younger ones). While this isn't all of us, it's all too many people. It's like we've moved beyond even the ability to even be an absurdist hero in this life. Instead, we drown in our own inability to talk about our interests / things you should know about us (I was surprised how many people had nothing to say about either of those things on night 1 of a class). We're not even riding shotgun. We might as well be lying in the trunk.

As for talking about our interests, if we can't do that, then what can we do on a much more intense scale?

I take this problem for people my age and younger back to the era of Kurt Cobain since it's my era (I'm sure I could take it back to ancient Greece). We were all searching for something. Those were some good times, and I'm happy to be a part of Generation X and the "Grunge" era. It was amazing to live in England during that time. It made me who I was and some of what I am.

However, in wanting the dead body in his house not to be Cobain's body, people like me missed the point. Here was a man who was struggling with serious drugs, who was surrounded by a world that was crashing all around him. Instead of trying to help people like him, who were filled with problems, we just mocked Courtney Love for her entire existence and her public response. Only Eddie Vedder put things into perspective while expressing being ground up in the public eye / fame machine with his "Messiah" quote. 

Seeing as Katy Perry is now a "joke" to so many, we've learned nothing.

As for my generation, it defined my place in culture, music, literature, and day to day life, but as all "fun and carefree" things are, it was fleeting. Sure, I'll remember places, people, and concerts, but did it truly define me to be able to be married, be a professional, own a home, recover from my mistakes, or survive a situation like Parkinson's? Sure, in some ways, it expresses me and some of it did help me, but is it the deeper part of my life? For all of the people I know who made it out of their "generational" world intact, they redefined themselves right after it. Like King Henry IV, Falstaff has to go. There is leadership and maturity, as well as purpose, waiting for us - if we grow up and leave the empty and temporary things behind.

Nevertheless, as we move beyond our emptiness, we must leave others behind. Sadly, along the way, we will watch our heroes die, not of old age, but their own hands. Like Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, the history of depression and meaninglessness has led to many casualties. Kenneth Rexroth, a Beat poet, explains it well in "Thou Shall Not Kill."

As time goes by, more names make this list as they die by their own hands, too. Other young people feel so nihilistic that they hurt others before hurting themselves. I'm not here to go political on this, but I want to know why this is as something more than latching on to a cause to find "so called evidence" to advance their own other cause (no more guns, violent video games, dangerous meds, mentally ill people running around, rock music, capitalism, low church attendance, or any one of a number of things). 

Instead, I want to do my part in helping people find their own peace, their own enjoyment that doesn't hurt others, and their own place in time. I'm not here to sell them mine.

I don't want to get into the politics of this other than to say, "What can we do to like ourselves, enjoy our lives, and do meaningful things? What do we need to do to realize life is about community?"

This isn't an economic or theological concern. This is about realizing we're all on the same team as a people concern. This could be family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, or random acquaintances. Life is about respecting ourselves and others. By any means necessary, let's do better.

Martin Seligman - positive psychologist

So yes, as society sees two more high profile suicides (Kate Spade + Anthony Bourdain), we are asked to think about several issues. Here, I feel compelled to state a few things that I feel for you:

A)    If you know someone who needs help, be there for him or her as best as you can. 1-800-273-8255 gets you the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. CNN has an article on what else needs to be done in addition to just making a phone call.

B)    Encourage people to get professional help. Provide them with empathy.

C)    I IMPLORE you to learn about the side effects of your medicines. There are lots of nasty ones out there. See THIS LIST. If you don’t like what’s going on, from a rash to behavior that is unrelated to who you are as a person, you have the RIGHT and RESPONSIBILITY to DEMAND something new. Please check out articles LIKE THIS ONE by Susan (Robin’s wife) Williams. It’s big and it’s scary, but it says things we Parkies (and other people with conditions) need to confront (even if Robin didn’t have Parkinson’s, Lewy body dementia is close enough). Additionally, other people need to be able to talk to you about these effects. Please open up the best you can.

D)    Anoint people in your life as something more than caretakers. I may call my wife the CEO of my Brain, but she is also on my living will. That's more real than a clever nickname She gets to make legitimate medical decisions if I can’t. My parents are the Board of Trustees of my Brain. Between the 3 of them, they have the right to consult together on my behalf. I have given them the right to discuss things I may not be aware of (though I’m usually really good at acknowledging all things, I sometimes can’t see everything). My job is to sit down, shut up, listen, and think about what I'm experiencing and what it could do to others.

E)     Many of us with Parkinson’s (or other conditions) have issues with serotonin to go with our dopamine problems. We’ve seen dark days because of biology playing its cruel hand on us, as well as life issues that multiply this, but we moved through them to be here today, even if it hasn't  been pretty. We have our scars. Some of them were self-inflicted. Others are emotional. The point is, we need to acknowledge this and work toward better solutions. Sometimes, it all begins with a "you're OK, man." Whatever it takes. I've needed to hear it and say it. Remember, we've all been there.

F)     One solution for people in need of better living through chemistry is to push for anti-depressants with less harmful effects. Some people self medicate to avoid these effects. I'm not here to judge that, but if we can make an iPhone whatever, can't we do better here, too? Research meds in a scholarly way on scholarly sites. Don't rely on my advice to say, "Oh, don't take X. I got Y from that." Yes, it may be true, but my body is really sensitive to some meds. Yours might not be. While chat rooms are beneficial, rely on professionals. I may have learned about my condition, but I'm not a medical expert (neither is Jenny McCarthy). Talk to your professional about it... not your neighbor.

G)    Another solution is to live by positive psychology, philosophy, theology, and / or whatever values make sense to you (in addition to medical treatment). As I stated at the tops, there’s a lot of negativity out there. When people lose meaning in their lives, then what? The point is that when we do things that create purpose, be it cleaning trash off a trail, painting a picture, teaching a class, or any other process that makes the world better, we’re doing what our deepest self likes. Be this D.H. Lawrence, Dan Pink, or Sonja Lyubomirsky, it’s all good. Just do things that you can enjoy (and don’t help other people) and things that you can be proud of.

H)    In the end, you don’t have to feel ashamed to get help. Share your emotions. Work toward your solutions in a multi-pronged attack. Don’t expect overnight success. Just keep moving no matter how long it takes. If you have to cry, cry. If you need a hug, ask. Just keep moving, however slowly. Don't let medical stigma hold you back. You're a good person... whatever it takes.

I)       Just because the person you are / the people you know who feel these problems don’t design handbags or have extreme television shows doesn’t mean they and / or we aren’t as important as Kate and Anthony. Every loss we take is a bad one. People who shuffle off this mortal coil, like those who live on it, are beautifully imperfect. We all have our faults, but we also have a journey that impacted others for better or worse. Don’t ever forget that or how important you are to someone. Whether it’s a spouse / friend / relative / co-worker / me (after all, you support my writing dream / Parkinson’s advocacy by being here). You make a difference. Find a way through. You got this, as Mo Onstad would say!
J)   Or as Winston Churchill said, "We will never surrender!

K) Last but not least. Life is funny. The things we misspoke on, the things we never thought would happen to us, the medications we once stigmatized / didn't understand... yeah... things have a way of coming back to us double. This isn't a punishment from God, but I will say the universe has a terrible sense of irony. My life is living proof (beefcake, beefcake)! Nevertheless, learning helps us and others. Make your life work.