I was inspired today when I heard about this gentleman who lost both legs due to frost bite when he and his colleague were stranded in bleak conditions during a rescue mission for 14 days in the year 1982. (You can google his story: Mark Inglis). He has gone on to accomplish so much in life since his traumatic experience and is still going strong, inspiring so many people along the way. What he said during his interview will always be in my heart. He said, "one thing you cannot amputate is your spirit and your soul." As I was pondering what he just said, it brought back so many memories I had growing up with my father who is also an amputee himself and has always been an inspiration to me.
The more I learn about people and life, the more I believe that a physical disability cannot hold us back from anything we desire to achieve. It is the emotional disability that puts us in our coffin while we are still alive. This is what I truly believe, and even more so now as I go through some of the most challenging times of my life emotionally. I beat myself up for not being strong enough or courageous enough to take action that will help change my future and life. It is most odd that we become our worst enemy when what we really need is ourselves to be our own best friend. I know I am blessed in so many ways and I have all limbs in tact. And I certainly know that when I am not playing full out, it is not my physical ability that is the problem but my emotions that are disabling me to not reach the heights I so want to achieve. I was reminded today of that.
My father taught me early on in life that your mind and what you think about is what makes you or breaks you. My father lost his leg in the second war (Americans call it WWII) in Bougainville while fighting against the Japanese. You can read a bit of the history by searching for this website: Marines in World War II Commemorative Series.
When my father had both legs, he was a champion swimmer in high school (still swims like a fish!), captain of the water polo team at his university, and was an avid surfer, and had a lot of ambition for his future. After losing his leg at war, I believe his life changed drastically and he had very difficult hurdles to overcome. By the time I came into this world he was 54 years old and he had already accomplished so much in his life - he achieved the highest degree in the traditional martial arts as a non-Japanese (Kendo and Iaido), wrote a few books (his first book was translated into a few languages and is still a classic: "This Is Kendo"), he has travelled the world, and has inspired many people around the pacific through his academic research and seminars. I still find it amusing that even after his life was completely changed with losing one of his legs by the "enemy" (then, the Japanese), he fell in love and married a Japanese woman over a decade after the war, is still happily married to my mother, living in Okinawa, Japan for over 40 years now. My father and my mother's story is absolutely amazing to me but that is a whole new story so I will perhaps leave it for a future blog someday.
When I was in my early teenage years, I was a bit shy and embarrassed that my parents were "different" than my friends at school. Not only were my parents 40 and 54 years older than me, I was not sure how my friends would take it when they found that my father was an amputee as well. It was already bad for me to shy away thinking that my friend's parents could have easily been children of my own parent's, I did not know how to handle it if they said, "what is wrong with your father's walk?" But that feeling soon faded as I grew up seeing my parents being way younger in heart than any other of my friend's parents, and my father helping me understand the thoughts and emotions my father experienced before and after losing his leg. He told me stories that made me cry and stories that made me laugh until my stomach hurt. By him sharing with me those stories and feelings, he helped me get a higher level of understanding that these disabilities actually did not make my father any more or less a human. The talks with my father also helped me become a bit more "mature" as a child in those days.
I learned that nothing was going to stop my father from accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish even though he did not have both of his legs. I remember around my father's 70th birthday, he said that he would start learning Chinese because China is going to be the biggest boom in history. Most people will say, you are already 70 so why even bother? To my father, he was just getting started! He is now writing his 5th book which will soon be published about Japanese chopsticks and chopstick holders. He even sends me email to let me know how things are going back home and updates his website when he "has the time" (you can check it out by searching for "Doc Warner"). A few years ago, my father was called by the Japanese government to inform him that he has been awarded one of the highest commendation awards by the Emperor of Japan for his contribution of bringing back the martial arts (Kendo and Iaido) back to Japan since it was banned by MacArthur after losing the war against the US.
My father is 94 this year and has only recently resorted to using a wheelchair which he profusely rejected to use for many years. Probably because he felt that he was relinquishing his "mobility" he hung on to all these years, and it would somehow be a symbol of the end of his freedom. According to my mother, however, he now has been "enlightened" with this new way of being mobile, and has become unstoppable again. Now you know why I truly believe that a physical disability cannot hold us back from anything we desire to achieve. My father is a living example of one of the many people who have a physical disability who go out to achieve bigger things in life and continue to inspire us to think out of our box.
