Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Raissa Mendes
I'm staring straight at the ceiling.
"Beep - beep - beep."
At first, I think it's the sound of text messages coming in from friends,
recapping a fun night out, or planing our next adventure.
This time, it's the sound of the machines behind me,
tracking my various bodily functions,
keeping me alive.
I can feel the halo stabilizing my badly broken neck,
but I can't feel most of my body.
I'm paralyzed from my shoulders down,
unable to sit up or feed myself,
and I'm trying to ignore the looks of shock and dismay
on the faces of my friends and family as they come in to visit.
The next morning, Dr. Chang stands beside me,
tells me I've suffered a severe spinal cord injury,
that my prognosis is "not very good,"
and I'm introduced to my new and inseparable best friend:
a wheelchair.
Ninety-six hours before,
this is me.
I'm standing on a twelve-thousand-foot peak
in the Eastern Sierras,
on a once-in-a-lifetime backpacking trip,
and I'm a few weeks away from flying to the Middle East
and visiting a very special woman I've recently met.
Ninety-six hours to go from the John Muir Trail
to the ironically named John Muir Hospital.
I'm lying in that bed,
fighting through the haze and confusion of the postoperative medications,
when the gravity of my situation and the path I choose to embark upon
become very clear.
"You will never walk again."
Heavy words, delivered softly,
words I choose to ignore,
when I decide to pave my own path to recovery;
to ignore the negative prognoses and limitations,
to adopt the laser focus, put on blinders
and commit my everything to one ultimate goal:
to get out of the wheelchair and walk.
But where do I begin?
How can I even comprehend a timeline for recovery
when I can't even grasp a fork or hold a cup of water?
Will I be able to play the piano?
Actually, I was never able to play the piano.
(Laughter)
All these dates start getting thrown around:
"two years," "six months," "one year."
These are the seemingly arbitrary time frames that doctors use
to describe someone's potential for recovery after a spinal cord injury.
This antiquated yet ubiquitous thinking
says that whatever physical abilities I have after that magical date,
that's what I have for the rest of my life.
One date stands out from the rest.
In a little over a year,
it's my friend Jill's wedding,
in Italy,
and I'm not only invited,
but I'm meant to be an integral part of the ceremony.
I start to imagine it:
vats of pasta,
mounds of exquisite cured meats,
days of laughter and friends and wine and celebration ...
That's it, it's decided: I'm going to go.
I have to be there, on my feet.
I'm not going to let her down.
Jill's wedding becomes my self-enforced recovery date.
As soon as I'm out of the hospital,
my recovery becomes my number-one priority
and my full-time job.
It involves a variety of different therapies,
that have all been made possible
by the generous support of friends, family,
and even complete strangers.
Six months later,
I wake up one morning, frantically push away the covers,
look down at my feet and realize that I'm wiggling my pinkie toe.
It's not dancing like Ricky Martin;
more like a drunk penguin that's listening to Ricky Martin.
But I'm definitely moving it.
The connection from my brain to my lower body isn't lost.
Hope is alive.
I write a blog post about it, and it blows up.
WordPress features my post,
and overnight,
I have hundreds of strangers wanting to know about my story.
An unofficial and unanticipated writing career is born.
My blog matters.
My recovery matters.
A few months later,
I'm featured in an Al Jazeera documentary about an exoskeleton bionic suit.
The video goes viral,
and again, people from all over the world are reaching out to me,
wanting to know my story,
asking me questions about my recovery.
But I don't know what to say.
I haven't reached my goal.
I'm not on my feet, and I'm still working as hard as ever.
But I'm not giving up.
It takes almost a year and a half
before I'm able to finally regain some control in my legs,
when with great effort, I start to do squats.
Now, I always had skinny, soccer-player legs,
but I could do a couple of hundred pounds in a squat.
Now, a fraction of that is a challenge,
but it's a step,
a little big step.
One day, after two years and literally thousands of repetitions,
of always needing someone assisting me to lift my hips up off the ground,
I'm finally able to do a bridge by myself.
Every practitioner of every background,
Western medicine, Eastern medicine,
they all emphasize the importance of bridging
as being a necessary step in being able to walk.
Dormant muscles are finally waking up.
The accomplishments are building upon each other
and growing.
Now, I can't say that anything about this injury and this situation has been fun,
but I've learned a few things from it.
Celebrate the little big steps.
Those accomplishments along the way to your goals,
even the ones that seem insignificant and trivial,
they deserve to be recognized.
Now, I know what you might be thinking, because I often think the same thing,
"Come on, let's not get carried away celebrating something small
when our ultimate goal still looms ahead of us."
Well, I need to be reminded of this all the time
because I'm really hard on myself and don't give myself enough credit,
but I sincerely believe
that it's only by celebrating the little steps
that the big steps become achievable.
Recognize the power of your words.
The words you choose have a huge impact on your objectives, on your goals,
on the limits that you face,
on the outcomes of every situation you encounter.
For me,
the importance of words became painfully clear
when that neurosurgeon gave me my first prognosis.
His words were so close to defeating me completely,
shutting off all of my hope,
but I decided that at the end of the day,
his words were his words and my words were mine,
and I knew whose words I was going to listen to.
So think about the words that you use,
even in your own head, unspoken, to yourself,
and the effect they have in your life.
If you think something is going to be challenging or difficult,
then it's probably more likely that it will be.
If you decide to embrace a new opportunity
and think that it could be something fun or rewarding,
then you probably will have a more positive outcome.
So recognize the power of your words,
because they matter, a lot.
Accept that some of your goals are moving targets.
Now, we all ave our own respective goals and targets that we attach to them.
"Next fall, I want to go to grad school."
"In a couple of years, I want to buy a house."
"Within three years, I want to get a promotion at my job."
Now, if you don't buy that house,
and year three comes and you haven't gotten that promotion,
do you just say, "Okay, that's it.
Everything I worked for until now goes out the window.
Time to give up because I didn't reach this one goal"?
Of course not.
You're not going to give up.
I am not giving up.
You have to keep going.
This is a widely studied aspect of human behavior,
and in psychology, it's known as the planning fallacy.
When it comes to a future task,
we are overly optimistic and inaccurate in estimating how much time it will take.
(Laughter)
It's true.
The solution, I've learned, is to be flexible with your goals,
but own them;
accept that they're moving targets, but hold yourself accountable.
So if you don't reach that goal,
reset that target no matter how painful it is.
That's exactly what I had to do
when it came to my self-enforced recovery date.
Did I make it to Jill's wedding?
No.
I didn't.
I was disappointed,
but I quickly decided that I had to reset my goal
and come up with a new target.
And when I did, it still involved the wedding.
But this time, it wasn't a friend's wedding;
it was the first step towards my own.
Remember that special woman I mentioned earlier,
the one I was going to go visit around the time of my injury?
Well, it turns out she stuck with me for every step of the recovery.
And if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have come this far.
So I knew that I had to make it official.
But how do I do that?
Propose in a wheelchair?
No, out of the question.
Get down on one knee?
I could,
but there's a good chance that if I get down there,
I stay down there.
(Laughter)
I knew that the only way I could do this
would be to stand up on my own two feet and propose eye to eye.
And while I kept it a secret from everyone around me,
I worked hard towards it every single day.
One day,
on the shores of Lake Tahoe,
I did just that.
Did she yes?
Well, let's just say
now I have my new and much better inseparable best friend.
Little big steps.
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Cheers) (Applause)