It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the dual burden of experiencing Alzheimer's while being aware of its effects.
Terry Pratchett's quote poignantly captures the profound struggle of living with Alzheimer's disease. It highlights not only the cognitive decline associated with the illness but also the emotional and psychological toll of being aware of one's condition, creating a unique and painful dichotomy of existence. This awareness can lead to a deeper sense of loss as one grapples with the fading of memories and identity.
In practice
In a support group, this quote can be shared to foster understanding of the emotional complexities of Alzheimer's.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.
We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.
I find more and more that I am a man of the 1920s. I still expect something exciting. Drinks, animated conversation, gaiety: the uninhibited exchange of ideas.
The mind we have when we practice zazen is the great mind: we don't try to see anything; we stop conceptual thinking; we stop emotional activity; we just sit. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.
To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
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