Feeling Sorry For Yourself? Read This!

Tony Judt, a brilliant political essayist and academic, suffers from motor neuron disorder, in his case a variant of Lou Gehrig’s disease. His account of his physical state in the New York Review of Books is touching, sad, harrowing. I woke up this morning groggy and bitchy from a bad night’s sleep, but when I read the following I called a halt to my pity party: “Imagine for a moment that you had been obliged instead to lie absolutely motionless on your back—by no means the best sleeping position, but the only one I can tolerate—for seven unbroken hours and constrained to come up with ways to render this Calvary tolerable not just for one night but for the rest of your life.”

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