THE QUIET FIGHTERS

There are many quiet fighters who live among us. These are the people who struggle within their own minds or bodies to survive, who are forced to fight against themselves. If we can fight against ourselves, then conversely we can fight for ourselves. We be our own worst enemy, so we can also be our own best friend.

I came across this essay in the London Review of Books, from the writer Anne Carson, on her life with Parkinson’s. The article made me think of a friend of mine who lives with this cruel illness.

Life can be so hard and so unfair. My friend is, and has always been, one of the good ones. I hope he knows how much I love him, and how much I admire his courage in facing this adversity.

The essay by Anne Carson is called Gloves On!

“So,​ your life. There it is before you – possibly a road, a ribbon, a dotted line, a map – let’s say you’re 25, then you make some decisions, do things, have setbacks, have triumphs, become someone, a bus driver, a professor of Indo-European linguistics, a pirate, a cosmetologist, years pass, maybe in a family maybe not, maybe happy maybe not, then one day you wake up and you’re seventy.”

Sound familiar? The part about waking up and you’re seventy, or 66–as still have four years to go on the road to 70.

“Entering the shatter zone. Hands within hands. Metabolic and metaphorical vectors overlap. Is this confusing? Yes, it is confusing.“

“I say to myself, it’s just a matter of attention; turn the page, pay attention, try again. I try again; I am wrong. Life slips one more notch towards barbarity.

Life is no longer fair!”

Why do we assume that life should be fair?

Gloves on!

“Neurologists now seem to believe that the brain is plastic and that certain activities can rewire it, by generating new neurons to replace lost ones or by exciting neurons that have gone idle or slow. Boxing is recommended.

I go to a boxing class three times a week. Everyone in the class has Parkinson’s, various degrees of damage. At a certain point in each class (after stretching, shadow-boxing, drills, strength training) the instructor yells: ‘Gloves on!’ We rush to the lockers for our boxing gloves. Putting on your first glove is easy. To don the second glove you have to get help. ‘Don’t use your teeth!’ the instructor calls out. Interesting fact: it is impossible to conjure the black doorway while someone else is putting a boxing glove on you.”

The black doorway. Isn’t that a brilliant metaphor? Doors open and doors close. They are part of entrances and exits. My daughter is taking some boxing lessons, inspiring her Pops to consider boxing lessons as well. As part of my workout routine after my bypass operation, I would throw some punches in the privacy of my own home.

Boxing provides cardio benefits, as well as coordination and balance. Balance is increasingly more essential as we age, reduced to the challenges of standing upright, and not taking a fall. Nobody wants to fall, but in life, fall are inevitable, so it is essential to learn how to fall, yes there is a right way and a wrong way to go from the vertical to the horizontal. More importantly, we must learn how to break a fall and how to get back up. At its base level, boxing is movement, not necessarily force and impact. Remember the Great Muhammad Ali, who said “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.”

Ali found grace in a sport that was violent to its core. Muhammad Ali’s greatest foe may have been the Parkinson’s that he fought, from his diagnosis at age 42, to his death at age 74. Doing the math, that is 32 years of struggle, most likely longer, as he probably had it before he was actually diagnosed. How many rounds is that? How many bells? How many retreats to his corner?

Ali had many adversaries in his life, from his knockout of Sonny Liston, to his many bouts with Joe Frazier. There were three fights with Smokin’ Joe, culminating in the Thrilla in Manila, which Ali won after Frazier’s corner called the fight after 14 brutal rounds.

Another of his great fights, was the Rumble in the Jungle, his bout with George Foreman, before Foreman became better known for his Grills. In this fight, from the second round on, Ali tired out his opponent with what he called “The Rope-A-Dope”. Essentially, he spent much of the fight, literally on the ropes, taking punches to his body and arms, while shielding his face. In the humid heat of Kinshasa, Zaire, his younger opponent tired out, allowing Ali to knock him out in the eighth round. It was a fight that showed how mind can beat force, as the underdog Ali outwitted his stronger, and younger opponent.

Ali faced many adversaries in his career, including the US government, who jailed him in 1967 for refusing to report for the draft to go to Vietnam. In June of 1967, he was convicted of draft evasion by a jury, which deliberated only 21 minutes. An appeals court upheld the conviction, and Ali served 3 1/2 years in prison.

At the time, Ali said,” Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

No, I am not going ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would put my prestige in jeopardy and could cause me to lose millions of dollars which should accrue to me as the champion.

But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is right here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…

If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.”

Eventually the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal. In the case of Clay v. United States, Ali was freed, as the Court unanimously overturned the conviction.

But of all the fighters Ali faced in his career, his biggest adversary, the one that that killed him in the end, was Parkinson’s. Known for his dancing in the ring, Ali couldn't keep dancing, as he gradually lost his speed, which was his best weapon.

Three years after he retired from boxing, his pace and speech began to slow, and he was formally diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1984.

In the end, there were no final words, as Parkinson’s stole his ability to speak.