what Victor would never be able to do on his own again, including breathe. He would need a machine to help him breathe for the rest of his life, or so the doctor said, but Victor resolved to prove the man wrong,and although his progress was very slow, he was eventually breathing without artificial aids again. Victor's message from this personal triumph was that you should never let anyone limit your life or your talents. You must never let anyone tell you what you can or can't do, and don't put limitations on your own life. "Life is what you make it," is how Victor summarised this point. Victor spent seven months in hospital. When he finally arrived home with his mother, he sat in the car while she fetched something from the house,and all the happy family memoriesflooded back to him while he sat there. He thought of playing rugby and soccer,ofhis parents bringing food to cricket matches for the post-match celebrations,ofdriving down the road "pumping" his radio in the car, and he thought ofhow easy it all seemed, but now, he couldn't even wind down the car window to let some cool air in. "In our everyday lives, we never say,"Why me? Whyam I so lucky? What have I done to deserve this life of mine more than any other person?" We always complain about the small things in life, until something really goes wrong. The first question that I asked myselfwhen I found that I was paralysed was,"Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" But nobody is better than anyone else in the world,and you must live with what you have." The defi Victor then affirmed that everyone has two choices in life. You can either choose to be negative about your circumstances and your life, or you can choose to be positive. You can choose to make those around you negative,or you can choose to make those around you positive. He chose to be positive, but he posed this question,"What do you choose for your life?" He continued by saying that you must make this choice every day, nition ofa quadriplegic is someone who is powerless and helpless, but the two most importantparts ofa person''s body are the mindand the soul. and live each day as if it were your first, and as ifit were your last, because you don't know when it will be your last. "Don't let your memories control you; you must control your memories." Victor then told the audience that life doesn't matter about age, but rather about selfconfidence. When Victor was going to shopping centers or anywhere in public, people would stare and even laugh at him,and he needed to do something about his self-confidence. "The only person who can do anything about your own inner-belief is you." After a physiotherapy session at the hospital, his mother wheeled him onto the street outside the hospital,and again,people stared at him. It was at this moment that he decided that something needed to be done about this, and he thought that ifthey were going to stare at him,then he'd give them something to stare at,and with that, he started screaming madly as ifhe was a mental patient. Victor's lesson from this incident was that sometimes we need to do something out ofour routine and take life a little more light-heartedly. From that moment onwards,his self-confidence rose enormously. "The definition ofa quadriplegic is someone who is powerless and helpless, but the two most important parts ofa person's body are the mind and the soul, and both of mine were in perfect condition. Although other people thought I was a nobody, in my own eyes, I'd just become a man. Don't let other people's perceptions of you control you." He continued this advice by saying that you should know yourself. "Life can be difficult,and sometimes you will feel frustrated by the things that you can't do, but you have a choice. You can either concentrate on what you can't do,or what you can do. You can concentrate on what you don't have, or what you do have." 11
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTc3MDU5Nw==