Would you take the pill?
[Note: If references to “turning off pause,” found below, are new to you, you might want to read this introductory post for clarification.]
Suppose mainstream medical research finally came up with a “cure” for Parkinson's. Let's say it was a pill you could take one time, and it would permanently eliminate all well known Parkinson's symptoms. The only catch being that, as with current medications, it precluded pursuing efforts to turn off pause. Would you take the pill?
I doubt I would take it
I doubt I would take that pill. If you've followed this blog you might be able to guess why. It's because I would still be on pause! And getting permanently off pause is even more important to me than becoming “symptom free.”
With that in mind, now would you take the pill? Answers, I suspect, will be highly correlated with whether or not the reader has ever experienced turning off pause. Those who have turned off pause (especially if they were aware of what was happening at the time) and spent some time in the off-pause state will be far more likely to answer “no.” That hints at the profound difference between pause mode and the off-pause state.
Living life off pause
To make clear that difference, apart from the presence or absence of well known Parkinson's symptoms, consider, in part, the pause-induced Parkinson's personality (see RFP, 2020, p. 193). For someone who has lived for decades on pause, switching to living off pause can mean a switch to the opposite of every aspect of the Parkinson's personality. In other words, in comparison to life on pause, a person living life off pause will likely be: less rigid, less moralistic, less stoic, less serious, more playfully curious, and less orderly, among other traits. (In a personality style such traits refer to general tendencies. No one fits them all precisely.)
Moving beyond the confines of the most familiar traits of the Parkinson's personality, a person off pause is likely to experience: less wariness, less guardedness, a greater feeling of lightness, a more relaxed, carefree, easy-going nature, more spontaneity, a greater sense of ease, far deeper feelings of joy, a less judgmental nature, much less anxiety, a greater awareness of the vividness of life experience, and greater heart attunement (see descriptions spread throughout RFP and SOP).
These lists could go on, but you get the idea. In short, to live off pause it is to live with a deeper connection to the richness and vibrancy of life. And that's why I'd be unlikely to take the pill. I want that chance to live life off pause!
You can do better than “symptom free”
If you have Parkinson's you were probably on self-induced pause for decades prior to your diagnosis. Now you have a chance not only to recover but to live a better life than the one you had before. You can do much better than “symptom free.” You can also live the rest of your life off pause!