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    Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease
    Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease
    Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease
    Ebook224 pages2 hours

    Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease

    By Peter Hunt

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    About this ebook

    “To feel deeply is to fall deeply, not to stumble back to sunlight’s superficiality, but to evolve in curious darkness, learning to shiver in the fullness of the moon.” -From Beyond Identity.

    By age 43, Peter Hunt had lived an adventurous life as a Naval Aviator, commercial pilot, and shipwreck diver, so when diagnosed with Parkinson's disease he accepted the neurological disorder as simply a new challenge. There was a big difference; however, Hunt's previous tests had been by choice. Parkinson's was not. But what if Parkinson's disease was welcomed into life as an opportunity to grow? What if it was treated as a choice, not as a victim's label? The result—fifteen years since diagnosis, Peter Hunt flatly states that "Parkinson's is the best thing that’s ever happened to me." And he means it.

    Beyond Identity’s six-year collection of short stories, essays, and poems begins nine years after diagnosis, a time when Hunt's Parkinson's symptoms were at their worst. To examine his life at the most authentic level, Hunt scrapes away society's definitions and assumptions so that he might explore the essence of his identity beyond the adversities of brain surgery, jarring physical changes, and depression. Humble and brutally candid, Beyond Identity’s 90 short works trace the outline of an inspired journey, edging ever forward with humanity's most fundamental question – who am I?

    Join Peter Hunt, the author of Angles of Attack, Setting the Hook, and The Lost Intruder, on his continuing journey at www.peterhuntbooks.com

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPeter Hunt
    Release dateMay 17, 2020
    ISBN9781370987719
    Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease
    Author

    Peter Hunt

    Born in New York, Peter Hunt spent six years of his childhood in Athens, Greece, where he started diving in 1978. Hunt worked on several wreck diving boats based out of New York during high school and college, including the Wahoo, from which he made 13 dives to the Andrea Doria in 1983 and 1984. After graduating with a history degree from Brown University, Hunt joined the navy and trained as an A-6 Intruder attack pilot. During his naval service, he completed three aircraft carrier deployments to the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific over ten years of active duty, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals. Hunt went on to fly for United Airlines until being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2005 at age 43. That is when his writing began in earnest. Peter Hunt holds a master’s degree from the University of Washington, is the father of two adult children, and lives with his wife on Whidbey Island. He is the author of Angles of Attack, Setting the Hook, and The Lost Intruder.

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      Book preview

      Beyond Identity, Navigating Life's Waters with Parkinson's Disease - Peter Hunt

      Hunt_Cover.jpg

      Peter M. Hunt

      Beyond

      identity

      Navigating Life’s Waters with Parkinson’s Disease

      Copyright ©2020 Peter M. Hunt

      All rights reserved.

      Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

      Design and composition by Teresa Muniz

      Cover design by Teresa Muniz

      Cover photo courtesy of Karen Cox

      About the cover: The author and his daughter, Emily, watching the sunset from the aft deck of the Sea Hunt, Deception Pass, Washington, 2014.

      First Edition

      Dedicated to all my family.

      The unexamined life is not worth living.

      —Socrates

      Contents

      Foreword

      Chapter One: Running in Sand

      Precious Vulnerability

      A Book with a Soul—the Writing of Setting the Hook

      Veteran’s Day

      Running in Sand

      Keeping it Real

      Ghosts of the Corridor

      No Need to Panic

      Effortless Proficiency

      Breathe Life

      Walking the Road; Saying Goodbye to the VW Bus

      Proof of Life

      Chapter Two: Savage Simplicity

      Parkinson’s Strategies Learned the Hard Way

      Empty

      New World

      The Good, the Sad, and the Writhy

      Savage Simplicity

      Clarity in Purpose

      My Girl

      So, I Lied a Little . . .

      A Damn Fine Day . . .

      Chapter Three: A New Day

      Saying Goodbye to Ron Akeson—My Final Lesson

      Apart from Time AND Distance: Memorial Day

      A Bump in the Road*

      Happiness: On Considering Self

      When Life Moves Fast

      A New Day

      The All of Us

      To the Graduating Class*

      Goodbye, U.S.S. Ranger*

      Chapter Four: The Void

      On Report

      Water

      The Void

      The Riddle of the Sphinx

      Humility’s Legacy

      Imagination’s Key

      Walking the Dog

      Being Lost

      Appreciating the Rain

      Gifted a Life Ring—Farewell to Eric

      Chapter Five: Boldly Going Nowhere

      Creative Wonder

      Living with Parkinson’s after DBS

      When even Coffee Turns—Parkinson’s Sneaky Demons

      Parkinson’s Helped Resuscitate My Soul

      Chasing the Ball of Life

      The Most Unlikely of Places

      Motion’s Coming On

      Boldly Going Nowhere

      Losing My Mind

      Looking Within

      Chapter Six: Folly and Detour

      Groundhog Day All Over Again

      Something for Nothing

      Folly and Detour

      Unlearning Kindness

      Desolate Exploration

      Where Gritty Meets Sublime

      The Bear Went Over the Mountain

      Exploring Exploring

      Shadow of Doubt

      On Your Own

      Ego’s Indifference

      Chapter Seven: Ebb and Flow

      Falling Deeply

      Cup of Tears

      A Path to the Soul

      Words

      Surreal Bookends

      Better Questions

      Daybreak

      Timeless

      Tidelands

      Life’s Soft Journey

      Peace

      Venus Rising

      Howl

      Ebb and Flow

      Chapter Eight: Unseen Radiance

      A Most Curious Cadence

      Forward

      Hope and Regret

      Just Imagine

      Curiosity*

      Departure*

      Power

      Ego’s Dark Eye

      Enchantment of Miracles

      Nature’s Tender Siren

      Meaning

      Harsh Features

      Unseen Radiance

      Puddle Sprayed

      Soar

      Tilling the Soil—A Conclusion

      Afterword

      Appendix

      A Partial Reading List

      About the Author

      Foreword

      I’ve often said that Parkinson’s disease is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t say this to be shocking, although I have witnessed that effect on listeners. It is not meant as a self-improvement mantra either, nor did I come to this conclusion lightly. I say this to illustrate that Parkinson’s has forced me to honestly and thoroughly examine my essential nature, who I am, and why I exist. Parkinson’s makes every step to a broader perception much harder, but it is the reason that I started on this journey, and, for that, I am grateful.

      We all have life challenges that test us, inviting us to shape our destiny with the recognition that where and how we choose to focus our attention in large part determines the direction that our life takes. Focus, in my definition, is derived from a deep sense of personal identity, the essence of how we view ourselves archetypically as individuals. Identity is what the mind looks to as a reference, the missing adjective in the sentence, I am a (blank) person. Focus sharpens life assumptions, building the paradigm, the rules under which we conduct our daily lives. Some, and I would include myself, might call this our personal reality.

      Focus is a choice, while most life-altering challenges, the struggle one must come to terms with to live moment to moment, might not be. Parkinson’s disease is my current life challenge, but it is not where I choose to focus my attention. In other words, I do not identify first or foremost as a person afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. I must reinforce this conscious decision daily to ensure that I do not slip into the role of victim. The danger in identifying with an illness—of considering oneself a victim—is that it can quickly disempower the afflicted, encouraging them to grow more and more dependent on outside forces like medication for their sense of well-being. Eventually, the victim mentality can become resigned to an unfulfilled life guided by often arbitrary criteria perceived to be beyond their control.

      This collection of 90 chronological writings, some a single sentence and others running multiple pages, illustrates how a challenge like Parkinson’s can positively influence an actively evolving identity. Creativity plays a critical role in any form of expression. It acts as a catalyst, animating the learning experience, helping us to grow in our view of the world. My interpretative use of creativity happens to be through writing. This anthology of thoughts and feelings comes directly from blog pieces written years nine through fifteen since my Parkinson’s diagnosis. This period begins a year before the mechanical intervention of deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery, a medical device that provides electrical signals to both sides of the brain to mitigate Parkinson’s worst symptoms temporarily. It ends soon after a successful follow-on operation to replace and upgrade the DBS system’s battery pulse-generator power source.

      DBS makes everyday life tremendously more comfortable for me; however, Parkinson’s is still considered incurable, with or without DBS. Parkinson’s symptoms will inevitably worsen beyond debilitation until death. How long that will take, no doctor will hazard a guess. Still, there is a sizeable disparity in the severity of symptoms among Parkinson’s patients of similar diagnostic time frames and treatments. I like to think this might be rooted in each individual’s fundamentally different view of reality: not better or worse interpretations, just distinctive understandings. One particularly impactful experience to my reality was the discovery of the lost Intruder. Please let me explain.

      In 2014, I began searching for a long-since crashed U.S. Navy A-6 Intruder aircraft, which led to the writing of my last book, The Lost Intruder. My initial interest in finding this jet stemmed from pure curiosity and need for a challenge, but it quickly developed into something far more significant. During my search, I inadvertently cultivated a heightened state of awareness, sentience that reassured me that despite at times dire circumstance, everything was alright. I was mostly happy and generally at peace during this time, despite or maybe as a result of Parkinson’s gathering pain and discomfort. According to most western societal conventions, I should have been miserable during this period, but I was not, despite feeling the genuine minute-by-minute pains of the disease.

      Many synchronicities—meaningful coincidences, as coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung—occurred during my underwater exploration, culminating in the discovery of the jet 26 years after the accident. The U.S. Navy could not find this same aircraft using far more sophisticated equipment than available to me in my search. Back in 1989, when the navy started looking, the mishap’s paper trail was also fresh and the underwater wreckage more pronounced on the bottom than it is today. During my 18-month search, there was never a doubt in my mind that I would somehow find the lost Intruder, even though right until the end, I had no idea how that could be possible. My travels and the fate of this specific A-6 Intruder, an aircraft that I flew while an active-duty navy pilot some months before it plummeted into Puget Sound, seemed to be entangled through a shared collective experience, perhaps destined to rejoin eventually. At least this is what I sincerely believed in a rare nexus of subconscious and conscious thought at the time. And belief does make a difference in accomplishing life goals—potentially, a huge difference.

      After DBS surgery midway through the search for the lost Intruder, my amplified connection with the surrounding world began to fade, deserting me entirely soon after our team of technical wreck divers positively identified the submerged A-6. Up until this point in my life, I had experienced brief periods of heightened awareness before but always connected to a dangerous, physical challenge of some sort, peak experiences, as psychoanalyst Abraham Maslow referred to them. While languishing in a deepening depression after the discovery of the lost Intruder, it occurred to me that physical challenges of adventure related to flying or diving were probably behind me, leaving me initially no tried and true way to break free from despondency’s hold.

      Finally, the pain of depression grew too great, prompting me to try something, anything, different. Instead of pursuing an adventure-challenge, I opted to look entirely to within myself, a strategy which—aided by yoga, meditation, research, and much time spent in nature in contemplation—has helped me find a return path to the elusive peace experienced before DBS surgery. Today, a decade and a half into my Parkinson’s journey, I am mostly happy and fulfilled. I can also be a goofy son of a bitch who tends to smile a lot, a whimsical aspect to my developing identity that I’ve grown to enjoy.

      The writings in this book mirror my state of mind during this passage, a persistent return to what I consider to be an opening of consciousness. This anthology represents this awakening, a developing process that has undoubtedly resulted in some confusing or difficult to understand pieces, particularly toward the collection’s end. I recommend that each writing be read, allowed to sit, and interpreted on its own merits: if it resonates, perhaps consider it a while longer. If it falls flat or leaves you baffled, move on. There are no right or wrong answers here, just maybe new or differently framed questions to stretch your imagination.

      My intention in compiling this book is to intrigue, inspire, and reassure, not to advocate a remedy for life’s ills. There is no mention of religion or politics here, and rarely is the word cure used. Although I cannot adequately explain why, I feel deep in my gut that not all disease was meant to be cured, at least not by outside forces. If there is a point to living, then I am confident that it cannot be found at the bottom of a pill container. It is through consciously considering a debilitating disease or disability—or any significant challenge, for that matter—as an opportunity that I believe one can choose to be generally happy, not all of the time, but most of the time. Accepting life’s intrinsic struggle through a conscious rejecting of the aura of victimhood can also bring forward a lasting sense of well-being. Taking responsibility for the current reality of my disease empowers me to enjoy the moment while mitigating Parkinson’s symptoms well beyond my expectations.

      As do all my books, this, my fourth, describes a journey, only this time, it is all internal: an exploration of heart’s rapport with the mind, and the bonding of both to body through a rebuilding identity. It is a blended progression of personal experience and free-form creativity, designed to spark the reader’s curiosity to venture beyond the page’s accepted rhythm, to consider that which is beyond our ken, not to try to explain an event or process unilaterally. It is my goal to help kindle an introspective fire that motivates your journey of self-discovery. But nobody else can do this for you: it is your life, your

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