Gratitude 6: Thank Your Body

I wake up every morning, just a little creaky and achy from tossing in my bed. I can't seem to find that perfect spot/position to sleep! My mouth, throat and eyes are dry. Remnants of saliva crust are on my face. My joints are stiff and my ears are ringing.

Yet, every morning, I am thankful that I am alive and moving - that I can see, hear, smell, taste, talk, walk, read, laugh and feel. As I take my morning walk, I feel my body settle into its normal pattern. The blood flows and my joints loosen up. I take deep breaths to fill my lungs with good air. While my ears still ring, I hear the distinct sounds of birds, leaves rustling in the trees, cars driving by, lawnmowers -- all the sounds of my neighborhood.

Sure, I reminisce about times, when I was much younger, when I was able to bend like a pretzel, spring like a lion and run like gazelle...and I do wish I was just as agile at this age! Sometimes, I forget and try climbing a fence or dance a little too vigorously. My body tells me to stop. (I'm going to take a leap here: I think my family would agree. They're not interested in prying me off a fence or watching me hurt myself dancing.)

I am in awe of those who are not mobile or healthy and continue to live life to its fullest despite their physical limitations. They all have something in common -- they use their brain far more than we do and have more important things to do than complain.

"The only thing worse than being blind

is having sight but no vision."

-- Helen Keller

At 19 months, Helen Keller contracted an unknown illness that might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her both deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate, using her own signs, with the 2-year old daughter of the family cook. By age seven, she had more the 60 "home" signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibrations of their footsteps. After going from one referral to the next, Helen Keller's parents contacted the Perkins Institute for the Blind, whose director recommended Anne Sullivan to become Helen's instructor. This arrangement later evolved into governess and eventually her companion -- a 50-year-long relationship. Anne Sullivan taught Helen to communicate using the formal sign language of the deaf-blind community. Helen was viewed as isolated but was very in touch with the outside world. She enjoyed music by feeling the beat and developed a strong connection with animals through touch. As a young girl, she continued her education at a few institutions for the blind and deaf. Eventually, she was admitted to the Radcliffe College of Harvard University, where she become the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Determined to communicate as conventionally as possible, Helen learned to speak and spent much of her life giving lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" other people using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She, also, became proficient at using Braille.

She became an advocate of people with disabilities and other causes. She was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist and birth control supporter. She founded an organization devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1916, she sent money to the NAACP because she was ashamed of the un-Christian treatment of "colored people". In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Helen Keller devoted much of her later years of life raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind.

"We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe; and for that, I am extremely grateful."

-- Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was a thinker. He received a BA degree at Oxford in physics at 17. Three years later, he began graduate work at Cambridge where he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specializing in general relativity and cosmology. During this period, at age 21, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease that gradually paralyzed him over the decades. At that time, his doctors gave him a life expectancy of two years.

Stephen was fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as "a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams and ambitions as the next person." He eventually acquiesced to accepting the wheelchair. As his speech deteriorated, he used human interpreters and eventually used several different types of computer programs that allowed him to select phrases, words and letters using his eyebrows, breath and cheek movements. His condition did not stop him from studying quantum gravity and quantum mechanics, developing the Hawking radiation theory, lecturing and writing 8 books, and contributing to a better understanding of physics and astronomy. He died at age 76!

Personally, I cannot imagine being so focused and disregarding the heartaches, pains and discomforts of a debilitating disease or disability. It puts every complaint I have about my body in perspective. I am grateful that my body has supported me so well and I promise to treat it as well as I can -- perhaps, even pampering it, on occasions, with a pedicure, hot soak or massage.

Now, I'll have to figure out how to use my brain to make a difference as Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking did!

#thankyourbody #helenkeller #stephenhawking