? Learning obstacle | Main | Skipping a Day ?
December 14, 2004
Everything since then has been a bonus
I was reading an interview with Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist and Science Fiction Author in a New York Times Magazine supplement today.* Stephen Hawking has an incurable motor-neuron disease
The question that interested me the most was this:
Q: “Seriously, how do you keep your spirits up?”
A: “My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
Many people who have life threatening experiences and live through them seem to have a renewed sense of life in them. They take less for granted and are more thankful for every second they have. To them life is a gift. Lance Armstrong, six-time Tour de France winner fought cancer and lived to tell about it. His struggle and victory over cancer propelled him into victory on the bike and in life. He changed.
When we have faced the prospect of losing it all, we tend to value it more while we still can. I don’t have to go through a near death experience to know how preciously short our time here really is. I can see it in my family members who have already moved on. I can feel the loss and the joy and understand that I have to make the most of the limited time I have. It goes by quickly.
Another reason to be thankful today.
*. New York Times, December 12, 2004, Section 6, The 4th Annual Year in Ideas, Email Interview by Deborah Solomon, The Science of Second Guessing, Questions for Stephen Hawking.
Posted by carl1236 at December 14, 2004 4:04 AM | Attitude