Over the past few months, I have added one more guilty pleasure to my list, watching Live! with Regis and Kelly in the morning. I had never watched the program until this spring when an extraordinary man called Dean Karnazes captured my attention. Karnazes has been described as the world’s most famous ultramarathon runner. I was amazed at his endurance and spirit as his three thousand mile seventy-two day run from Los Angeles to New York City was chronicled on the show.
Terry and I began to watch Regis and Kelly on a fairly regular basis soon after my cancer treatment began in July. For a man over 80, Regis looks remarkably youthful and his boyish enthusiasm and charm makes him the perfect host for the wide range of celebrities who visit the show.
After twenty eight years in front of the cameras, Regis Philbin relinquishes his host chair tomorrow. A plethora of stars and high profile personalities have come to congratulate him and wish him well including Robert De Niro, Tony Bennett, Lou Holtz, Don Rickles, Michael Buble and Joe Biden. Despite the bright lights of stardom, Regis has not forgotten his roots and was at his gracious best when introducing five classmates and lifelong friends from the 1953 graduating class of his beloved alma mater Notre Dame.
Amid the frivolity of farewell guests was a visit and message from actor Michael J. Fox. After exchanging pleasantries for a few minutes, Regis asked Fox about the subject matter of his most recent speaking tour. Fox responded with a message filled with the wisdom that comes from his acting career and his heroic twenty year struggle with Parkinson’s disease. It was a message expressly for me and anyone else caught up in a real life drama.
For some unknown and fortuitous reason, I was taping the program that morning and so I can deliver Fox’s comments verbatim. Here is what he shared.
“There’s an acting rule which says ‘Don’t play the result.’
As an actor, you don’t play where the scene is going to go.
You just let the scene take you there.
And that rule also applies to life.
And that rule also applies to life.
If you get a diagnosis of something, don’t play the result.
Don’t go where you think it’s going to go.
Take it day by day and use all the resources around you and
accept all the help you can get and see where it takes you.”
As I await my bookings for a CT scan and a PET scan, I will continue to try to be patient as Fox suggests and hope that someday I can find the same fountain of youth that Regis drinks from.
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