A Rare Forward

[Guest guest]

As you know, I'm not a great fan of forwards, since they clutter up

my mailbox on a daily basis; but I am passing this one along from the

Chicken Soup mailing and hope it is useful for you today, as it aims

directly at our focus, the body mind connection.

 

Blessings,

Crow

 

The Power of Determination

By Burt Dubin

 

The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned, pot-

bellied coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to school

early each day to start the fire and warm the room before his teacher

and his classmates arrived.

 

One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames.

They dragged the unconscious little boy out of the flaming building

more dead than alive. He had major burns over the lower half of his

body and was taken to a nearby county hospital.

 

From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy faintly

heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother

that her son would surely die - which was for the best, really - for

the terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body.

 

But the brave boy didn't want to die. He made up his mind that he

would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did

survive. When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the doctor

and his mother speaking quietly. The mother was told that since the

fire had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body, it

would almost be better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a

lifetime cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.

 

Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not be a cripple.

He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had no motor

ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.

 

Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day his mother

would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control,

nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as

ever.

 

When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day

his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This

day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. He

pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him.

 

He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot. With

great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake by

stake, he began dragging himself along the fence, resolved that he

would walk. He started to do this every day until he wore a smooth

path all around the yard beside the fence. There was nothing he

wanted more than to develop life in those legs.

 

Ultimately through his daily massages, his iron persistence and his

resolute determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then

to walk haltingly, then to walk by himself - and then - to run.

 

He began to walk to school, then to run to school, to run for the

sheer joy of running. Later in college he made the track team.

 

Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who was not

expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never

hope to run - this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran

the world's fastest mile!

 

#####