Shaky Foot Wisdom
XXI.
Rediscovering Joy in the Time of Pandemic
Knowing that I need and want to engage in movement exercise while isolating further these long months of the pandemic leaves me keenly aware of limited options. Every vow to do some stretches or search YouTube yet again for exercises to do at home ends in the same malaise of I will do it later, after the pandemic or something. With a COVID19 vaccine on the horizon, I am hopeful that it will be much safer soon to participate publicly in a movement program.
Meanwhile a woman I know through the Parkinson’s Community has dealt with Parkinson’s for twelve years and today she prepares for DBS surgery to reduce her symptoms. I am happy for her and hopeful this produces the desired result. At the same time, I am equally hopeful that less invasive measures perhaps resultant from genetic studies will appear on the horizon before I would even experience a worsening of symptoms.
In just having finished Michael J. Fox’s new memoir, No Time Like The Future, An Optimist Considers Mortality, I do feel more optimistic about my future. Though I do not have the financial resources he has, I share having a loving longtime partner who deeply knows how to best support my emotional wellbeing while keeping a watchful eye that I am doing what will be best for me physically and emotionally.
Again, as I have mentioned before, the confirmation that I can engage in work that both challenges me and requires that I push through a lack of stamina, brings a certain joy of accomplishment. As I have been a proponent of bringing joy, even wild ecstatic joy, into my life for a long time, I am not surprised at the dividends this has brought me.
Of course, another medication adjustment for better sleep has helped immensely to allow me more energy and focused awareness to be present to joy bubbling up. I even found myself laughing along with consumers calling in for credit card account service and actually to my surprise having fun working from home again.
So as Michael J. Fox writes in his memoir, there is no time like the future and right now I am enjoying my present knowing a bit better that whatever my future brings I am ready.
