Michael J. Fox of “Family Ties” and Back To The Future fame has been battling Parkinson’s disease for decades, but the 60-year-old actor continues to maintain a positive outlook on life.
In an new interview with AARP The Magazine, Fox opened up about how he does this even with having Parkinson’s, explaining that “gratitude makes optimism sustainable.”
#OnThisDay 1985: Barry Norman chatted to Michael J. Fox at the London premiere of Back to the Future. pic.twitter.com/dNkjFYtALm
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) December 3, 2021
‘I Am Genuinely A Happy Guy’
“For one thing, I am genuinely a happy guy,” Fox said. “I don’t have a morbid thought in my head — I don’t fear death. At all. But as I came through that darkness, I also had an insight about my father-in-law, who had passed away and always espoused gratitude and acceptance and confidence. I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people would respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded that gratitude makes optimism sustainable.”
“And if you don’t think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking,” he continued. “Because you don’t just receive optimism. You can’t wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You’ve got to behave in a way that promotes that.”
While Fox acknowledges that “some days are more difficult than others,” he refuses to let the bad ones get him down.
“The disease is this thing that attached to my life — it isn’t the driver,” he said. “And because I have assets, I have access to things others don’t. I wouldn’t begin to compare my experience to that of a working guy who gets Parkinson’s and has to quit his job and find a new way to live. So, I’m really lucky.”
Fox Was Recently Uplifted By Back To The Future
In this same interview, Fox revealed that his beloved 1985 movie Back To The Future has been lifting his spirits recently.
“I came across it on TV last Christmas,” Fox revealed. “And I thought I was really good in it, better than I thought I’d been. More importantly, I got the spirit of the movie. I understood it was just a big giggle and that we all need … to take credit for what we’ve done and the lives we’ve touched and to occasionally step back a bit and appreciate that much of life has been great and that there’s a lot more to live.”
Watch Fox talk more about this in the video below.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991, and he went public with his condition seven years later. These days, he’s hoping that he leaves a legacy behind that goes far beyond Hollywood.
Fox Reveals The Legacy He Wants To Leave Behind
“I hope my children are a positive influence in the world,” he said. “I hope people will enjoy my work as an actor and get something from it. At a deeper level, I hope people see sincerity in the things I’ve said and done. If I’ve positively helped anybody with Parkinson’s, that’s great, too. I appreciate the purpose and opportunity to help the foundation, to be part of something that’s potentially so powerful and life-changing and world-changing — that’s huge.”
“Beyond that, and this is kind of a vanity thing – a lot of really great guitarists have come up to me over the years and said they picked up the guitar because of the ‘Johnny B. Goode’ scene in Back to the Future,” Fox concluded. “If I did anything in this life, I got John Mayer to pick up the guitar.”
Fox continues to be an inspiration to millions of fans from all over the world. We could all learn a lot from his outlook on life!
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