Point of View: Don’t Rage, Engage

I read recently a column by an 88-year-old who had discovered it was contentment that kept his peers going. What happened to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”?

Mary thinks you can be engaged, which I prefer to be, and content at the same time. Perhaps I’ve been mistaken in thinking of contentment as synonymous with self-satisfaction, a rather sedentary state to my mind.

Keep on moving is my mantra, one imparted by the late Andy Neidnig, who, all the runners here know, followed his advice as long, and as noteworthily, as he could.

And speaking of moving (and of being moved), I’m writing this week about how Michelle Del Giorno’s Rock Steady Boxing classes at her Epic Martial Arts studio in Sag Harbor are invigorating and strengthening students of hers who have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. 

One of them, Laura Stein, told me before Friday’s class that when a friend of hers had professed interest in joining the group, she’d told her, “Sorry, you have to have Parkinson’s first.”

Sensei Del Giorno keeps the energy level high during these rigorous 75-minute workouts that include repeated rhythmic shadow boxing, heavy bag work, and much footwork too. When she asked the students, one after another, what most impressed them about Rock Steady Boxing, heightened confidence, increased motivation, and the pleasure derived from coming together and cheering each other on were mentioned, as was the apparent salient fact that when it comes to ameliorating the neurodegenerative symptoms of Parkinson’s — the tremors, the problems with balance, movement, and even with speech and memory — it works.

A longtime exerciser, Stein told me “it was like getting slugged” when she learned last February that she had the disease. Soon, though, she was punching, fighting back with Del Giorno, pushing herself in new ways, coordinating her mind and body through boxing’s rapid-fire movements — engaged yet content in the company of friends.