We have all heard some version of the saying: We can’t control what happens to us. But we do have at least some control over how we respond.

It is easy to say. It is considerably harder to live.

Michael J. Fox and his family have been living a particularly difficult version of that idea for more than three decades. Fox was 29 years old and near the height of his career when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991. He had married actress Tracy Pollan only a few years earlier. They had a young son and a future that surely looked very different from the one suddenly placed before them.

Nothing about the diagnosis was under their control. What happened next was at least partly up to them.

What Happens Next?

Fox did not immediately become the optimistic public face of Parkinson’s disease that we know today. His first response was considerably messier and more human. He has spoken openly about denial and about drinking heavily as he struggled with what the diagnosis meant.

Over time, however, his response changed. He continued acting, disclosed his diagnosis publicly in 1998 and, in 2000, established The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. What had begun as a devastating private diagnosis gradually became a public purpose.

That did not happen in one dramatic moment. It happened through decisions repeated over years.

There is a temptation when we tell stories like this to make them too neat. Something bad happens. The hero rises to the occasion. Adversity is conquered. Lesson learned.

Real life seldom works that way, and Parkinson’s certainly does not. It is progressive. Fox has lived with it for 35 years. His physical circumstances have continued to change, sometimes severely. His response has therefore required not one decision, but thousands of them.

That may be one reason his story has something to say to the rest of us.

The Family Story Matters

The Michael J. Fox story is not just Michael J. Fox’s story.

One of the most revealing moments came when he told Tracy Pollan about the diagnosis. He has recalled her reaction in these words: “She didn’t blink.”

They had been married only a few years. Their son was small. Neither could know how quickly Parkinson’s would progress or what it would demand of their family. Fox has said that he felt guilt over what Tracy had not bargained for when she married him.

She stayed.

More than that, they built a life together. They raised four children. The disease became part of their family story without being allowed to become the whole story. Fox has credited Tracy repeatedly with sharing the burden while refusing to let Parkinson’s consume everything around it.

That seems important. We often talk about courage, persistence and resilience as though they are individual qualities. Sometimes they are. But sometimes persistence is possible because somebody else is standing there with us. Families can fracture under adversity. This family appears instead to have grown together through it.

That does not make the adversity good. It tells us something about what people can build around circumstances they never would have chosen.

Source: Michael J. Fox Foundation — “Read All About It: Michael J. Fox Reveals His Secret Optimism”

Optimism Gets Tested

Fox has long been associated with optimism. But one reason his version of optimism is interesting is that it has been tested.

In 2018, after surgery to remove a spinal tumor, Fox had to learn to walk again. Then he fell in his home and shattered his arm. He found himself on the floor, unable to reach the telephone, and his famous optimism suddenly seemed inadequate even to him.

That experience became an important part of his 2020 memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality. The subtitle matters. This is not an optimist pretending mortality does not exist. It is an optimist considering mortality.

Fox began thinking about his late father-in-law, Stephen Pollan, whom he regarded as an important mentor. Pollan had a characteristic response when circumstances were difficult: “It gets better.” Fox remembered something else about him. He found reasons for gratitude even when circumstances were not what he wanted them to be.

From that came one of Fox’s most useful observations: “Gratitude makes optimism sustainable.”

In a lengthy Fresh Air interview, he explained the connection: “With gratitude, you can find a way to be optimistic. If you have no gratitude, you can’t recognize the hope in the circumstance.”

That is different from being grateful for Parkinson’s disease, a broken arm, loss, disappointment or any of the other things that enter our lives without invitation. There is no reason to romanticize adversity.

Gratitude asks a different question: Even in this circumstance, what remains?

A spouse who stays. A family that grows. Work that still has meaning. Friends who show up. An opportunity to help someone else. A purpose that did not exist before the difficulty arrived.

Perhaps that is how gratitude sustains optimism. It does not deny what has been lost. It keeps what has been lost from becoming the only thing we can see.

Source: Fresh Air — Michael J. Fox reflects on life with Parkinson’s and No Time Like the Future

Source: Penguin Random House — No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

Until the Future Runs Out

Stephen Pollan gave Fox another thought that has stayed with him: “The last thing you run out of is the future.”

It is a remarkable sentence, particularly coming from a man who has spent decades living with a progressive disease. Fox does not know what Parkinson’s will take next. None of us, for that matter, knows what tomorrow will bring.

But until there is no tomorrow, there is a future.

And a future contains choices.

Fox’s choices ultimately extended far beyond learning to live with Parkinson’s himself. The Michael J. Fox Foundation has become the world’s largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research and has directed billions of dollars toward finding better treatments and, ultimately, a cure. His disease became a source of purpose that has affected people he will never meet.

The Foundation’s work has received extraordinary recognition. In 2026, Fox received the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for his leadership in transforming Parkinson’s research and patient advocacy. The honor recognized not his acting career but what he had done with something he never asked to receive.

That work is still gathering momentum. The Foundation has now funded more than $3 billion in Parkinson’s research and has launched a campaign called “All Grit. No Quit.” Fox says the new campaign aims to raise another $2.5 billion for research. Those are two different figures: the first is what the Foundation has funded to date; the second is what it hopes to raise next. At 65, Fox is still looking ahead, asking what can be done with the future that remains. michaeljfox.org

Purpose compounds.

A decision leads to another decision. Other people become involved. Knowledge grows. Scientists conduct research. Patients volunteer for studies. Donors contribute. One person’s response to an unwanted circumstance becomes something far larger than that person.

Source: The Michael J. Fox Foundation — Our Mission

Source: Lasker Foundation — Michael J. Fox, 2026 Public Service Award

A Lesson Larger Than Parkinson’s

Most of us will never face Parkinson’s disease at age 29 while living in the public eye. But everyone who lives long enough will face things he or she did not choose.

Illness comes. People we love die. Careers change. Plans fail. Our bodies become less cooperative. Abilities we once took for granted become more difficult. Aging itself is a continuing lesson in the limits of control.

The circumstances vary enormously, but the question is much the same: What happens next?

Fox’s story does not tell us that attitude can cure disease or eliminate adversity. It tells us something more credible. We retain some agency in how we meet what happens. We can accept reality without surrendering to it. We can look for something for which to be grateful without pretending that everything is fine. We can continue to find purpose. And we can allow the people who love us to walk alongside us.

Over decades, those choices can compound.

Michael J. Fox did not choose Parkinson’s. Tracy Pollan did not choose to have Parkinson’s enter their marriage. Their children did not choose it either. But together they have spent more than three decades choosing what came next.

Fox is now 65. Parkinson’s is still progressing. He falls. He breaks bones. Ordinary physical tasks have become difficult. There is nothing sentimental about that reality.

Yet there is still a future. And Fox is still finding something to do with it.

That strikes me as a pretty good description of aging gratefully. Not denying what is difficult. Not pretending we control what we do not. Not insisting that everything will work out exactly as we would like.

Rather, recognizing what remains, being grateful for it and doing something worthwhile with whatever future is still ours.

Michael J. Fox is aging gratefully until the future runs out.

So can we.

As always, be well, and age gratefully,

Chris

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