Bracing
Experience
“The
marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of
rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop
hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to
traverse.”
Helen
Keller
I
went to the orthopedic clinic at UAB yesterday to ask for physical
therapy for my right hand, which has been troubling me for a while.
Instead of physical therapy, I got a big, clunky hand brace to wear
24-7 for 4 weeks. To say it limits my activity is a gross
understatement. I felt grouchy and frustrated by the difference
between what I requested and what I got. Then I remembered the child
on the news a couple of nights ago, whose hand and foot were cut off
by ISIS. I recalled the brilliant scientist, Stephen Hawking, who's
spent the vast majority of his life in a chair, his physical
abilities draining like sand through an hourglass. I thought of
Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, whose music comes straight from their souls, and wouldn't be the same without the limitation of
blindness. And, of course, there's Helen Keller, who overcame both
deafness and blindness to redefine what it means to
be “limited.”
Sometimes,
sudden limitations, although annoying, force us to expand our
consciousness, develop new abilities, invent new ways of doing, think
outside the box—which, if you consider for a moment, is the very
definition of “limitless.” That kind of stretching lays down new
pathways in the brain, strengthens muscles weak from disuse. It
expands us in ways we would not otherwise go.
Sometimes,
having deficiencies in one area, causes us to discover strengths we
didn't know we had in another. It's a little like getting lost, and,
in trying to find your way home, discovering a whole new world. Every
human lifetime includes valleys and mountaintops, and a whole lot of
climbing in between. Strap on that brace and get going.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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