The .Plan

How one Christian couple is able to take their wedding vows seriously in the face of Huntington’s Disease — one of the most touching stories I’ve read since Margaret Kim Peterson’s book Sing Me to Heaven…

Now, Diana cannot follow complex reasoning. For example, when I ask her what her remaining pleasures are, she draws a blank. “That’s too complex a thought,” Dave says. They used to study Bible passages and debate their meaning, but now he just reads passages to her. To keep her mind active, Dave will play bingo with her slowly, or ask her to calculate three plus three.
     ”Life is really kind of crazy, and you have to individually put meaning into it,” he says. “How do you explain all the things in life that exist, and make sense of things, if you don’t have perspective? What do you think, Diana?”
     ”I agree,” she says.
     ”I see people who can plan normal lives, and I look at them, and they have freedom to get around and have good health. It’s a blessing. What do you think? Diana?”
     ”I agree,” she says.
     ”You don’t have to agree,” Dave tells her. “What do you think when you look around? When you’re in your recliner, and I’m not home, what do you think?”
     ”It’s God’s way,” says Diana.
     ”A little bit unfair?” Dave prods.
     ”Yes,” says Diana.
     ”Do you feel humiliated?”
     ”Yep,” says Diana.
     He fixes her a salad and pours some Vidalia onion dressing on it. Spearing a potato on a fork, he teases her. “I think Diana at one time wished that I’d be romantic and give her bonbons. And now I’m feeding her like this.”
–Liza Mundy, “The Vow”, Washington Post Magazine, March 9, 2008

Earlier today it was a beautiful 65. I saw a dog wriggling and rolling around in the grass amusing himself.

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works. Granted, many people emerge from boredom feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the point of life? There is a strong argument that boredom — so often parodied as a glassy-eyed drooling state of nothingness — is an essential human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science, and even love.
–Carolyn Johnson, “The joy of boredom”, Boston Globe, March 9, 2008