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About Hope Raymond Moody, MD, Ph.D and Best-Selling Author of Life After Life says:
Preface to Hope by Joel Rothschild Now as I'm writing this book, I'm keenly aware that this time is my bonus round. It has been a long road and today, I'm one of the longest living AIDS survivors. I've already outlived two of my doctors' predictions of imminent death. I've even outlived three of my doctors. I have lived with full blown AIDS for most of my adult life. So, it's possible I'll have passed on by the time you are reading my words. Whether or not I am alive doesn’t diminish the possibilities this book contains for you.. So far, during the time I’ve lived with AIDS over twenty million people have died from it. That’s almost the entire population of New York and Los Angeles combined. I'm constantly asked how I've survived while millions perished. The answer is contained within these pages. But, this is not a book about merely surviving, it’s about thriving. This is not a book about dying; it's about living. The events I've chronicled within these pages are deeply personal experiences. You'll come to know me as you read this book. I am grateful knowing that you will be reading my words. You are adding meaning to my existence and it is my intention to add meaning to yours. In many ways we may be different and in many ways we are the same. We will both experience many of the same joys in life and will share some of the same agonies. The different ways we suffer are not important. It is what we glean from that suffering that counts. Please try and relate to me as a human being rather than a gay man with AIDS. Today, I'm able to go through months of extreme physical pain with profound acceptance and peace. I've even found purpose and meaning in the suffering. It's not always been this way. After a journey filled with extraordinary transitions, I'm living a life without fear. I now see that I've been blessed by AIDS. I've accepted the circumstances of my life, and used both the good and the bad as catalysts for propelling me forward on a path to truly living. There are two Joel Rothschilds: one that experienced life before AIDS and one that was dramatically changed by AIDS. Humbling and momentous, this disease changed my life in a way that nothing else could ever have done. I could never have predicted my own experiences with loss. Hope transformed trauma into a new beginning. Sometimes, the most complicated problems in our lives have the simplest answer and the most frightening situations help us return to what's really important in life. We all have the ability to be survivors. Often we are simply unaware of the tools we already possess. The power to transcend loss lies within all of us. If you are suffering right now, know this, it will pass. Our spirits are amazingly resilient. Time alone can soften pain and loss and replace it with a warm glow. Nothing lasts forever, not even joy and bliss. We will all experience highs and lows in this life and at some point, our lives as we have come to know them will end. Therefore, it seems best to live life on its own terms, with acceptance, peace and hope. When I look back on my life, I realize that AIDS propelled me to a place of peace and joy. It challenged me to find new meaning in my life; to become a more compassionate person. I now realize that pain and loss have been essential to the growth in my life. I have become a better person from suffering and I know you too can learn from my losses. So many people learn only by beating their head against a wall. I know this is true because I used to do it too. Within these pages there lies an opportunity for you to benefit from my struggles. You can transcend pain and suffering and this may become your epiphany as well. You can come to enjoy life in ways you never thought possible and your challenges will become a source of strength. Here is the opportunity to gain clarity about your life and to free yourself from worry and grief. One good thing about living with a fatal disease is that you don't get caught up in the illusion that you have time to waste. I pray you realize this, and that you discover each day of life is your bonus round. Not one day of our life is to be wasted. Don't wait for a brush with death or a terminal illness to learn this lesson. That's the point of my writing this book for you. Excerpt from Hope Having the remarkable luxury to be able to look back, I’m amazed at the power of emotions. It was purely an emotional response that brought me to the brink of suicide. I was feeling pain that intellectually I knew would pass. Yet my intellectual understanding had little effect on the raw emotions. I was functioning on conflicting levels. I knew I had the capacity to create more pain or to bring greater serenity into my life. I reminded myself to not resist or numb my sadness. Doing so would only prolong the discomfort and agony. I had to allow myself to experience, and then process, my suffering. I relied on my belief that all the moments of life matter, including the ones that don’t feel good. Pain and loss are a part of the human condition. In time we are often able to see benefits from suffering. Time alone often heals us and in adversity we can grow. When we are forced to face our fears we learn of our greatest strengths. Suffering strips away our illusions and humbles us. We often think that we are invincible and in control of our lives, but, we are all going to suffer setbacks and pain. It is the unexpected events and changes that force us to question who we are and to eventually face our mortality. I had already learned that the questions “Why Me?” and “Why Now?” are unanswerable and serve no purpose. It seemed best to deal with life head-on and make arrangements to handle the situations I confronted. I relied on lessons from my past and spent a lot of time reflecting on the years since I had been given that death sentence. A friend once said that the only way to get over pain is to go through it. You can’t avoid or bypass it. She compared it to childbirth. Despite excruciating pain, the birth process can’t be stopped in the middle. Yet out of that pain, a new life will enter this world. She was right, and during my healing process this book was born. My experiences enabled to understand and accept the duality of our existence. As human beings we are pulled in conflicting directions. It is the nature of our existence to experience these polarities. On one end of the spectrum, the way we experience our existence is the result of living in the physical world and facing the challenges of satisfying our basic human needs. Functioning in the physical realm demands our almost constant attention. Our survival depends on it. We need to take care of basic physiological needs and then learn to accept painful moments, prior to encountering wisdom. Yet we are spiritual beings and also experience moments from the other end of the spectrum. Here we transcend our separateness and experience God within us. This is when we know your suffering has meaning and purpose. These are the moments of enlightenment. These are the moments that have inspired greatness, both big and small. As we encounter these moments, we find ourselves connected to our higher self, the Divine, to God and the Universe. It is perhaps the highest state we can achieve within our humanity. Part of our challenge is to figure out how to spend as much time as possible in this enlightened state of being because it is from this state that we grow. Experiencing these two states of being is like living in two different houses. In the house in which we begin our journey to enlightenment, we feel disconnected from each other and from God. All of our painful experiences and memories have built this house. I do not want to label this a bad place. For many people this house is a place of safety. However, the familiarity of this dark house can become a trap causing us to live a fear-based life, and to cower at what might lie outside. This is the house that contains hateful judgments against other people, and ourselves. We are our own worst enemy in this house, and often we are not even aware of it. We can be lost in the dark with the blinds closed and the drapes drawn. In this house, we can have a false sense of strength and never know our true capabilities. If we look inside, we believe ourselves to be weak, and these beliefs limit our potential. In this house, we feel despair and loneliness. In this house, the glass is always half empty and the mirrors do not reflect our true selves or God within us. In this dark house, we are not going to survive any disease. Our chances of healing and surviving await us in the other house. We can try and catch ourselves when we are in the dark house. It has become a priority of mine in order for me to stay alive. The other house is filled with love and kindness. Its foundation is rooted in our innate capacity to love. In this house we do not judge. We accept people as they are. We learn to accept other people's shortcomings and frailties, and in the process peace and contentment are born of forgiveness. This forgiveness extends not only to other people, but to ourselves as well. We come to know that when we are pointing fingers at others, we are most likely judging ourselves. In this house, we hold our hopes and dreams. We are our own best friend. This house is composed of all the positive and affirming elements in our lives. We sense we are connected to each other and the universe. This house is filled with light and in it we know how strong we are. We know we are larger than our body. It is here that we can come to realize the wondrous nature of our uniqueness and we embrace the entirety of who we are and what we have experienced. We are all actually a singular universes within ourselves replete with living organisms and complete environments. Yet all of us are made of the same components. Our blood contains the minerals of the sea and our flesh is made of the compounds of the Earth. If we look within, we can see our own bodies mimicking the very structure of nature. We can truly know that we are all connected and part of something greater. We are all assembled from the same core building blocks of life. We are all a part of God. Yet, we also have a profound effect on the whole of God. It is as if we are all individual grains of sand on a great beach, which is God. Our primary duty is to shine our individual grains so the beach glows with shimmering light. Some of us have settled comfortably into the dark house and others into the bright house. It is in our nature to move back and forth between the two houses. This transition occurs as a reaction to events in our lives. It is change that can create discomfort in either house. The more serenity we experience in our lives, the greater our resilience to the negative effects of change. It will become less often that you find yourself back in the dark house. When you make the bright one your permanent residence, you will begin to recharge your energy and the energy of those around you. Our lives become miraculous and we can ease the transition of others. Soon we find ourselves living life with purpose and meaning. In this house, we can fulfill our destinies and achieve our dreams. In the house of light, we can discover the life we were born to live. My thoughts of suicide are an example of when ran out of the bright house back into the dark house. Immediately prior to that, I was soaring. It was the end of December of 1999 and I felt contented and blessed. Then everything abruptly changed. In January 2000, I was suicidal. I never thought I would experience a setback of that magnitude after all the challenges I had survived. But, as long as there is life, there are challenges we cannot avoid. It all comes back to making choices. When we feel like we do not have a choice, we are in the dark house. We are trapped there and do not see what our choices are. We always have choices, we just don’t allow ourselves to see them. When I ran into the dark house, I was subliminally sabotaging myself, playing old well-acquainted tapes in my head. I was sending messages to myself like: “If I was better looking or if I didn't have AIDS I would not be alone.” My belief was that I was less than adequate. My thoughts were that nobody would ever love me again, that I was the ugliest person alive. In reality, Keith's leaving had nothing to do with me. His leaving had to do with his confronting his issues. When we begin to recognize our emotional reactions to events they become less turbulent. The strength I accrued surviving the difficult physical infections allowed me to move from the dark house back into the light house. Doing so, I realized the negative effects that self-sabotage could have on my physical health. It remains a simple, universal fact that we will all be touched by loss and will inevitably suffer in the course of our lifetimes. At some point, we all experience changes that affect us physically and emotionally. The loss of dreams, aspirations, expectations or relationships can shift our perspective. They are often life altering and can serve as catalysts into depression, angst and fears. Even the anticipation of such changes can produce catastrophic consequences. We can internalize fears until they wreck our chances at happiness, or even kill us. No one can live life one hundred percent of the time in a place of enlightenment. No matter how good we are at mastering life, it is going to deal us enough situations to send of us emotionally reeling. When we experience these unforeseen setbacks, sometimes we have to start all over again, and that’s okay. I had to start healing by forgiving myself for being human and allow myself to experience my full range of emotions. Sometimes we just have to put one foot in front of the other and walk. Sometimes we have to force ourselves to meet the challenges of life. Sometimes it takes every ounce of strength and courage to do what’s right for ourselves. Sometimes it’s not easy to forgive but it’s never impossible. The one constant in life is that everything will change. Just around the corner can be a new and astounding experience. No matter who or where you are, you are capable of transforming your state of being. You can escape the enslavement of the dark house and enter the enlightened state of consciousness. You can even sustain it in your life. The choice is yours. Hope Forward by Dr. Peter Anton MD Dr. Peter Anton, MD. is a graduate of Harvard University. He is one of our nations most respected HIV research scientists. He is Associate Professor of medicine at UCLA and Director of UCLA center for HIV research. As a scientist, he also works with the National Institute of Health. Heroes, like hope, come in all shapes and sizes. We are inspired by these individuals and often view them as leaders. By virtue of the quality of their actions and the integrity of their intent, they appear to soar. In simply living, they spark a reflection that enables us to sense a bit of our own heroism. It is that common resonance of something so human that is felt here. Hope is so full of potential that it can easily reach through the pages and touch your heart instilling in you the very hope that you may have felt waning. Joel Rothschild is one of these heroes. His humanity touches our hearts and his story awakens in us the very hope that at times, we lose sight of... In Hope, you'll read a lot about not just surviving, but thriving; not just about the meaning of life, but of the meaning to life. About acknowledging the commonalities of our human existence in terms of peaks and valleys of emotions, rather than the differences that appear on the surface. You’ll read, between the lines, that holding expectations of what the future will bring is a foolish, chalice of rose-colored glass. Today, and how we do today, is all we have. Expectations differ from hopes. The fundamentals of hope rest only in believing that there may be a tomorrow. In that most fundamental form, hope requires little structure. It is only when we start romancing the future and coloring its structure with hoped-for rewards, does hope transition to expectations. Three years ago, my partner of 18 years died suddenly of a heart attack. The shock and loss were unfathomable…and still, to a great degree, remain so. At that time, Joel’s first book, Signals, came into my hands. It was like a breath of fresh air. Shortly thereafter, I met Joel and have had the honor to become a friend and doctor to him over the past several years. Joel, the man, you will get to know in this book. You will see that he is extremely human, vulnerable, and a pit-bull of a survivor. Even when his mind thinks he can’t make it, his heart and spirit know they can…and they do. Although he may do it more quickly, and certainly with far more creative and articulate skill than many of us, his passionate, questioning and seizing of life are described in such a way that we, as readers, can see the process…and, in doing so, realize he is not so different from us. Regarding Joel, the patient, who continues to survive with AIDS for almost 20 years, I can tell you that what I know of his history is all fact. He is one of the longest-known survivors with HIV infection. He has weathered storms of Karposi’s Sarcoma, Pnuemocystis Pneumonia, and Meningitis among other life threatening opportunistic infections. He has juggled the complications of multiple diagnostic procedures, changing medical regimens and revolving (dying) healthcare providers as well as having to shift and repeatedly re-focus insurance issues. And through all that, he is still here. Most of you reading this will already be believers that attitude and outlook make a difference. To you, this book will be more guiding support. For those of you reading this for the first time who find it difficult to believe that someone might say " having the AIDS virus turned out to be a blessing in disguise", believe me when I say it can be so. Too many times I’ve been blessed by being a partner in healthcare for someone diagnosed with a terminal disease. It continually humbles me to watch the emergence of grace and dignity in the most trying of times. In those individuals that for unknown reasons manage to get a few more months or years as a "bonus round", their life outlook often is transformed... and transforming for those around them. I’ve often heard one say, " if given the choice of being who they would have been without the AIDS virus, or who they are with the AIDS virus, they would definitely choose the latter." One should be very clear that that is a reflection of the clarity and simplicity that are distilled when loss, whether your own or that of ones you love, is near. I find a fascinating parallel in the tantalizing new area of "psychneuroimmunology". This is a relatively new field investigating how attitudes, beliefs and mind-set influence the body and health outcomes. It is remarkable that we are finally getting back to appreciating the exquisitely delicate but important connections between the mind and the immune system. One of the greatest areas of research is focused on the concept of ‘stress’. In a most general definition, stress can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual angst; it can include more concrete components such as malnutrition or lack of sleep or simple jet lag. There is a conventional interpretation that "stress" is bad. Stress is not bad. Stress is. It is a component of life and, in fact, it is a necessary component that stimulates us both as whole organisms and, on a cellular level, to respond to some tension in our world. So it’s often said that it is not the stress that is unhealthy, but it is one’s response to stress that may be so. For it is in the response that we see whether one’s coping mechanisms are healthy or unhealthy. In a way, that is what Joel is saying in this book. He is telling us how he’s learned, through feeling and acceptance, to respond to life’s inevitable and necessary challenges…but now with a different attitude. And that has made all the difference. He has learned to respond to his stress in a more life-sustaining and health-promoting way. That doesn’t change the underlying condition, but it certainly influences the quality of the life he lives. As Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross said on giving advice to survivors of tragedy: "You can tell them that you can’t change the direction of the wind. But you can control the setting of the sails." That says it all. |
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