no time like the future an optimist considers mortality

Maybe then you can bring up the 'everything will be OK'. We do it all the time (dr & friends) to try to make people feel better, but sometimes you just have to acknowledge the pain, the anxiety & let things/people be miserable for awhile.

Is this really necessary? Has he actually made peace when he's looking at others for validation? Or is the 'making peace' just another thing we have to say to make others/healthy people feel better?” - overuse of 'it's OK', 'it's really not that bad', instead of 'oh golly, hours of pain at an 8 must have been hard', or 'let's try another med to reduce your bone marrow aspiration anxiety since the first one didn't work. I have to tell people the whole deal' - probably since I'm biased and a lot of palliative care is hoping while preparing for badness, holding space for both” - 'having made peace' part. “A lot resonates, especially, 'Things don't always turn out.

What are you looking forward to in the next 12 months? What parts of this passage resonate with you?įox offers up gratitude as the key to reconciling the conflict between optimism and realism. I can be both a realist and an optimist.Īs he reflects on his reaction to a broken arm, Fox re-evaluates his optimist persona and whether he has been an “honest broker” with the Parkinson’s community. It puts into sharp relief the joy, the accomplishments, the overwhelming love of my family. I am grateful for all of it-every bad break, every wrong turn, and the unexpected losses - because they’re real. In telling other patients, “Chin up! It will be okay!” did I look to them to validate my optimism? Is it because I needed to believe it myself? Things don’t always turn out. I have made peace with the disease, and I might have presumed that others had, too. “Have I oversold optimism as a panacea, commodified hope? Have I been an honest broker with the Parkinson’s community? The understanding I’ve reached with Parkinson’s is sincere, but the expression of it risks being glib.

No time like the future an optimist considers mortality