How far will you go? What a question, huh? Not, what are you going to do about this? Not, how will you handle things? But...how far will you go? Less a question than a challenge. A challenge to face the future with grit and hope but also a declaration of confidence and support. With those words, that dad wasn't just encouraging his son to look forward rather than back. He was telling his son that there were still big dreams out there for the taking...and that he believed in his son's ability to seize them. He realized that nothing was going to bring back the use of his legs – at least not in the same way – but that just because his future looked different than he thought, that didn't mean worse. It just meant...different.
And so he set about re-igniting the passions he'd always had for physical exertion and achieving goals. He swam the English channel, competed in the Olympics, got married and, in the process, developed humility and gratitude.
We're all on a hero's journey. Every single one of us. We strive. We fall down. We lose our way. But at each juncture, we have a choice. To accept where we are with no hope for change, or to realistically assess our circumstances and fight for our lives. Maybe not the lives we thought were ours...but the lives we can still have if we ask ourselves just how far we will go.
