One\nof the traits I have observed in my nearly three quarters of a century as a\nparticipant in this experience called life, is the embracing and engaging of\nbehaviors easily identified as habits. Habits can fall into one or more of several\ndifferent categories. Good habits we tend to think of as positive (good) for us\nwhereas so-called bad habits can be detrimental to us. Often the habit itself\nmay be good within the context of our behavioral system, but negative in its\neffects upon us when misused or poorly or excessively engaged. Habits often arise\nin the expression of personality. I am a hugger, which means that when seeing\nsomeone I know and appreciate, and in an environment conducive to it, I will open\narms and give a warm and welcoming hug. I enjoy being close to people I know\nand have had little objection to being close to people I do not know if the environment\nseems conducive. The behaviors which have grown to be applied as normal for me\nare done so in a way that assumes a positive outcome of feelings of warmth and\naffirmation regarding others. There have been times when I am sure I have\nhugged someone who was infected with any number of forms of potential diseases,\nbut either by vaccine or an active functioning immune system remained\nuninfected or affected by the hugging. As an unwilling (but ever growing one of\nacceptance) host to ever diminishing levels of dopamine leading to a multitude\nof symptoms that are NOT normal in the usual human experience, this host has\nwith great difficulty, gained competence in living with the consequences of\ndiminished dopamine. Add to this experience of daily frustrations in the world\nof PD symptoms and medication side effects, the necessary behaviors to\ncompensate for those symptoms and effects, and the one experiencing those\neffects can easily fall into the mental trap of being the victim. Bring on the\ncoronavirus and the potential for a life threatening and or life taking\nexperience, resulting in engaging (not engaging more often than not) behaviors\nthat put hugs in the realm of don’t dare, and interaction with others who\nhave not been with you in the place and period of frank isolation and you have\nnow another behavior (or set of them) required in the quest for daily living.\nThis is abnormal behavior and experience for most of our lives, yet for an\nunidentified extended period this is expected to become the new normal. This\nparticipant in the exercise of living life to the fullest finds these behaviors\nto be abnormal. Therefore, what it seems we are destined to engage for an unidentified\nperiod of time in a new set of abnormal behaviors that facilitate our desire to\nremain infection free and open to the possibilities of a fully expressed and\nexperienced life. During this undefined period of coronavirus avoidance, this\nunintentional participant in the PD challenges is called yet again in the world\nof virus avoidance, to engage behaviors that can only be understood in the\ncontext of being abnormal. Bring it on! We will aggressively seek to\nunderstand and engage it and mourn the loss of what we view from this side of\nthe equation as normal life experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the traits I have observed in my nearly three quarters of a century as a participant in this experience called life, is the embracing and engaging of behaviors easily identified as habits. Habits can fall into one or more of several different categories. Good habits we tend to think of as positive (good) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parkinsons-disease-rants-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-thrivalist.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}