Have watched (and re-watched ad nauseum) the biopic about the great Professor Stephan Hawking. It was streamed from the Cambridge Film festival. I sometimes think that were it not for my efforts in the gym, that my body would go down a similar path as his.
He is someone that I knew very little about. The many facets of this cloistered academic, are very well told and presented in it. Thankfully his horrible motor neuron type disorder, didn’t really kick in until he had successfully finished his studies, found a partner and had kids, combined with a profession and a means to support them.
It annoys me to hear people compare ( and essentially minimize) other people’s predicaments, to his. “You have nothing to worry about, look at him”.
Too cruelly simplistic.Too dismissive. Its like telling someone who is lying in bed all day totally immobile, that “at least you can still see and hear, thank god”.
He has a great spirit, but having 24 hour care and the financial ability to call the shots over how his life is lived.
I passed Foxrock church yesterday, and I remembered the one and only time I was inside there. A very young guy (who I vaguely knew from UCD) had passed away from motor neurone’.
His voice box had turned to mush, leaving him a real body prisoner. It is the horrible reality for so many, that the mind can be so strong, but trapped in an ugly uncoordinated shell. Like a hard drive with no computer!
Another of the many human heroes, who daily fight the black hole!