By Anil Amar
Hope entices us with a promise that sustains when all else is gone. It's inherent and innate, and generates courage to continue on a path we cannot see. Nurturing hope in our hearts reminds us, that things can and will get better. Hope unlocks the stranglehold of fear, frustration and uncertainty.
Dr Henry Viscardi was born without legs. He spent his first seven years as a charity patient in a hospital. He struggled as a severely crippled child and as a horribly deformed young man. The world was unkind, heaping challenges upon him — a legless man in a body 3 feet 8 inches tall! He survived because he refused to succumb to hopelessness. He held strongly onto his belief that all life must have a purpose — and that at the right time, his would be revealed.
At age 27, he got fitted with artificial legs. Suddenly a whole new world opened to him — his life was transformed. He began helping disabled veterans at a hospital during the World War II.
He married the woman of his dreams, and together they had four daughters. Dr Viscardi founded the Long Island Human Resources Centre for the Disabled. He transformed adversity into opportunity, teaching thousands of physically challenged people to have faith and belief — in themselves and in their potential.
In a speech he said, "Hope is a duty, not a luxury. To hope is not to dream - but to turn dreams into reality. Blessed are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make them come true. As for me, I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. I seek opportunity, not security. I want to dream and to build, to fall and to succeed. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid to think and act for myself. I have a wish for you. I suppose the conventional thing for me to do, would be to wish you success and happiness for the rest of your lives. But success and happiness, as the world measures it, is too easy. I wish you meaning — for all the remaining years of your life."
Life isn't easy — there are no guarantees. It is a series of challenges, some bigger than others, all of which we must face. Seemingly unconquerable at times, obstacles are often just detours we have to take, to meet our ultimate goals. No matter what adversity we face, we must believe it is conquerable, and that we will emerge stronger because of it.
As a child, Suzy could not learn to read and write. Doctors said she was retarded. Growing up, she became unmanageable, and was sentenced to two years in a reformatory. She worked hard to overcome her inabilities for 15 hours a day. Her huge efforts paid off when she earned her high school diploma. She emerged from the reformatory a changed person with dreams. But misfortune lay in wait as she suffered a stroke, resulting in erasing her ability to read and write. She was financially untenable. To make matters worse, she became pregnant without benefit of marriage. With help and support from her father, Suzy fought back from the depths of her tortured life.
In order to proceed with her life, she reasoned that, despite her unfortunate situation, she was still the person she had always been; that her life wasn't over - it had just become different. She noticed that many couldn't see beyond their adversity-shattered lives, and see that their futures were still bright. She wondered why people allowed their existing realities to obscure their possibilities. The ability to re-look at and re-create goals is a matter of faith and hope — involving self-worth, the ability to adjust to life's many changes, and finding fresh ways to tackle problems. It's based on self-respect and knowledge that one's past experiences have helped make us the unique person we are.
She started taking courses at a community college. On completion, she applied to and was accepted by the State Medical School to study medicine. Suzy became a doctor — healing others — an eloquent testimony to her faith, hope, self-belief and perseverance. Hope and faith go hand in hand. Have you ever been at the end of your rope with nothing to hold onto - but hope? If you didn't have faith, you'd have crashed to the ground. Hope gives us the courage to hang on, while faith gives us the belief that if we can hang on with hope, help will come. To make hope come home to roost, we need to find that faith inside us — which tells us where hope is.
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
