A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned (5 page)

If you’re lucky, at some point in the future when you’re in need of guidance, or maybe just moral support, you will cross paths with a suitable mentor. Even luckier, you’ll realize you’ve had one in your life all along, and you’ll gain a new appreciation for how you benefited from that relationship. The luckiest circumstance of all, of course, is a combination of the two. You’ve had help all along, and as the path widens or narrows, whatever the case may be, new and powerful influences will enter your life and aid your progress.

In my experience, a mentor doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly, tells you what
they
did or might do, then trusts you to draw your own conclusions and act accordingly. If you succeed, they’ll take one step back, and if you screw up, they’ll take one step closer. Whatever it is they teach you…pass it on.

PART IV

Victims of Pomp and Circumstance

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

J
OHN
W
OODEN

HERE YOU ARE, YOU’VE PULLED IT OFF…AFTER
years of jumping through hoops, meeting, sometimes surpassing, expectations, you’ve made it. You’ve broken through to the light, even though it often seemed there was only night at the end of the tunnel. Congratulations on your achievement.

Going forward, if you put in the work, you’ll reap the reward, just like in school. You will probably find useful and marketable applications for the skills you’ve developed. Many of the friends you’ve made over the last few years will stay with you, and along with your family and the new friends you meet along the way, they will form a network of support and contacts that will open new doors and keep you safe behind old ones. You’ll be emboldened to challenge yourself and to embark on unexpected journeys. Maybe you’ll fall in love or remain committed to a school sweetheart. There might be kids, a dog, a yard—if that model fits your ideal. Perhaps you have a less conventional lifestyle in mind, custom designed by and for you. Life is good, and there’s no reason to think it won’t be—right up until the moment when everything explodes into a fireball of tiny, unrecognizable fragments, or it all goes skidding sideways, through the guardrail, over the embankment, and down the mountain. This will happen (and probably more than once).

What I’ve just described may be shocking coming from me, given my reputation as an optimist. Although I like the identification, it’s not exactly the way I would characterize my outlook. I think I am a realist. The reality is that things change; the question is, how will I perceive that change, and am I willing to change along with it?

It may seem hard to believe, but it’s catastrophe that offers the most promise for an even richer life. This is the gateway to the good stuff. In other words, you never truly know which way the wind is blowing until the shit hits the fan. And further, if you don’t mind getting a little dirty, that breeze will carry you a long way.

I’m assuming that you have, up to this point, accepted my premise that we all pass through an education of sorts. Mine, although perhaps not as structured as yours, was composed of the same fundamental lessons, leading to a point of readiness to take steps without so much guidance from other parties, save select mentors. In other words, I’ve learned enough to be safely unleashed on society. In surviving those first few years in Hollywood and the first few years of my initial success, I passed through a crucible of sorts and forged a life that many would view as exemplary of the American Dream.

On the career front, I had captured lightning in a bottle more than once. On television with
Family Ties
and in film with
Back to the Future
, as well as with other projects, I had arrived at a place far beyond the simple working actor status that I sought when I left Canada for Los Angeles as a teenager. I met a girl too smart and too beautiful for me by a long shot, and I somehow persuaded Tracy to marry me. We soon had a healthy son. We lived in luxurious homes, drove foreign cars, and traveled to faraway, exotic places. In short, life just couldn’t get any better. But it would, though only after it got much worse.

In 1990, when Sam was six months old, my father died unexpectedly. Suddenly a father to a son, but no longer a son to a father, I finally began to understand the value of my dad’s experience and advice only when it was lost to me. Later, after a number of body blows left me sucking for air, I would realize that my dad continues to be a guiding force years after his passing. It’s ironic, given his “prepare for the worst” philosophy and my happy appetite for risk, that his death should be the harbinger of the toughest period of my life: graduate school for the soul.

Within a year, I started to exhibit symptoms of Parkinson’s disease: twitching, mild tremor, pain in my left shoulder, some rigidity. Chalking it all up to an injury, I consulted a sports medicine specialist. He referred me to a neurologist, who diagnosed young-onset PD. At thirty years old, I was told that whatever else I should expect, I could probably only work for another ten years. This was my explosion. This was my life skidding horribly sideways. Unable to process what was happening at first, I went into denial. Refusing to disclose my medical situation to anyone but family, and covering the symptoms with medication, I was really trying to hide from myself. Things would only get worse before they got better, though I’m convinced they only got better
because
they got worse. Losing my father staggered me, and the diagnosis left me reeling. Wary of placing a burden on my family, I pulled in and started to isolate myself.

When we’re coming off of an accomplishment, or a series of accomplishments, we have an idea of who we are and what we represent to the people around us. How would this new, diminished version of myself measure up to the expectations I had for myself and my family?

Instead of coming up with new ways to deal with a new problem, I resorted to old coping mechanisms. From the time I was a teenager, through my early days in Los Angeles, to the heady days when my film and TV career was taking off, I’d always use alcohol as a sort of insulation. Strange as it seems now, I thought booze kept me sane:
I’d rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full-frontal lobotomy
. I never thought of it as a tool or a way of self-medicating; it was just part of the celebration. But what I was really doing was trying to soothe my anxiety and create a buffer between myself and the harsher aspects of reality. In my first year of living with Parkinson’s disease, I took the buffer concept to a new extreme. If I couldn’t obliterate the problem, I would obliterate myself, or at least my awareness of what was happening. Parkinson’s medication for the symptoms, alcohol for the feelings; it didn’t take long for this self-prescription to produce toxic side effects.

Before I continue with my own personal story, let me give you some idea of where I’m heading. It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

I always find it ironic when people refer to me and my situation as “the fight of his life,” or describe me as a “battler” or “engaged in a struggle.” None of these terms apply to the way that I now approach my disease. The only way I could win—if winning means achieving and maintaining a happy and balanced life—was to surrender, and I took the first baby steps toward that victory by admitting powerlessness over alcohol.

Sober didn’t mean better, not right away. Far from it. There were periods of time when I spent hours and hours submerged in the bathtub, a sort of symbolic retreat back to the womb. When I wasn’t just trying to keep my head below water, the rest of those first couple of years without drinking were like a knife fight in a closet. With no escape from the disease, its symptoms, and its challenges, I was forced to resort to acceptance. A piece of wisdom I picked up along the way became the basis of a liberating new approach to life: “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectation.”

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that it’s as easy as finding a switch marked “acceptance” and, by flipping it, flooding the problematic areas of life with edifying light. Would that we could. Acceptance, as I’ve come to understand it, simply means acknowledging the reality of a situation, that its truth is absolute. There’s that word again. You may remember that I’m on record, going back to my school days, complaining to my mother about the stubborn intractability of mathematic absolutes. But I think I’ve finally figured out how two plus two can equal five. Or maybe—stick with me on this one—the precise equation is actually two
minus
two equals five.

The fallout from my father’s death, the impact of a neurological illness, the emotional struggles and social isolation brought on by both my overuse of alcohol and the difficulties in giving up drinking: I first viewed all of these as setbacks. In her book
On Death and Dying
, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross broke down the process of death into five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I wasn’t dying. Well, at least not anytime soon. But I was experiencing a profound sense of loss, and I came to understand that the Frau Doctor was incredibly astute. Denial:
This isn’t happening
. Anger:
It’s not fair
. Bargaining:
What can I do to get out of this?
Depression:
I can’t, it’s hopeless
. Acceptance:
What do I do now?

It all came down to choices. As it related to the central issue of my life, I realized that the only choice
not
available to me was whether or not I had Parkinson’s. Everything else—how much I understood about the disease, its emotional effect, its treatment, and its impact on my career and family—was up to me. In the short term, there’s no doubt that any loss creates a void, a hole. My first instinct was to try to fill that hole in whatever way I could. To this end, I brought into play my ego, my will, and my own biased view of the ideal reality.

As my acceptance grew, I came to understand that loss is not a vacuum. If I don’t impulsively try to fill the space it creates, it gradually begins to fill itself, or at least present choices. By choosing to learn more about the disease, I made better choices about how to treat it. This slowed the progress and made me feel better physically. When I felt better physically, I was happier in my surroundings, and less isolated, and could restore my relationships with my family and friends. Tracy, relieved that I not only was closer to the man she married but now an improved version, felt comfortable about expanding our family. And so Sam was soon joined by twin sisters, and in time, yet another sibling. Realizing that a film career that often sent me far from home for extended periods of time was no longer tenable, and accepting that I might only be able to work another ten years or so, I chose to make them ten good years and return to television.

Signing up for
Spin City
and choosing to film it in New York, where my family was based, not only was a great creative experience, but set me up well financially for a life in which my ability to ply my trade might understandably be limited. When that time came, I felt comfortable sharing my situation, not only with my circle of friends and associates, but with the public at large. Freeing myself from this isolation unleashed a flood of good will, and inspired me to capitalize on that good will to the benefit of the Parkinson’s community. This led to the formation of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and in the decade since its inception—all credit to the dynamic and diligent group of people who signed on to carry out our mission—we’ve funded nearly 200 million dollars in cutting-edge research and, in many ways, created a new approach to the way cures are sought, here in America and around the world.

As promised, I’ve tried to avoid offering advice, per se. My intention in writing this book was to be illustrative, not prescriptive. However, let me make this suggestion: Don’t spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice. When things do go bad, don’t run, don’t hide. Stick it out, and be scrupulous in facing every part of your fear. Try to be still. It will take time, but you’ll find that even the gravest problems are finite—and that your choices are infinite.

You may have heard me say this before, but I’ll continue to repeat it until I find it not to be true: Because Parkinson’s demanded of me that I be a better man, a better husband, father, and citizen, I often refer to it as a gift. With a nod to those who find this hard to believe, especially my fellow patients who are facing great difficulties, I add this qualifier—it’s the gift that keeps on taking…but it
is
a gift.

Believe me, I still have the occasional fantasy that I’ll wake up one morning, and as I begin to go about my day, gradually realize that I’m symptom-free. There’s no tremor, no cramping, no shuffling, no pain. Having long ago accepted the realities of PD, the neurogenerative deterioration, the irreversible cell death, I know that, absent the discovery of a cure, it could never happen.

Except that it did.

If this sounds like a fairy tale, then the setting couldn’t have been more appropriate: the mysterious and enchanting mountain kingdom of Bhutan. Nestled in the Himalayas, its rich Buddhist culture is alive in the sateen rainbow of the distinctive native dress, in the architecture, best described as a chalet/pagoda hybrid, and most expressively in the beaming faces of the Bhutanese people, young and old.

I was in Bhutan shooting footage for a documentary on optimism for ABC. Conceived as a companion piece to my book
Always Looking Up
, the film aimed to seek out people, places, and things that, in some way, represented the power of positive thinking. We had already traveled to Washington, D.C., for Barack Obama’s inauguration, visited a cooperative dairy farm in upstate New York, and attended the Cubs’ Wrigley Field home opener in Chicago. But it was our journey to the other side of the planet, with its water-color flora and fauna and soaring Himalayan peaks, shrouded in a wispy, diaphanous gauze of mist, that provided the emotional and philosophical heart of the piece. What compelled me to bring our crew here was the tiny kingdom’s progressive trade policy and, really, their national ethos, built around a policy their king and government have labeled Gross National Happiness. In a world where most nations would seemingly go to any lengths to increase their Gross National Product, the Bhutanese believe that economic development should never come at the cost of their people’s happiness. Therefore, in every trade deal the government enters into (for example, the sale of hydroelectric power to neighboring India), culture is valued more than cash.