After class today I got rigged up - reluctantly - to hear the yearly talk to be addressed to the entire academy. I waited in my seat silently psyching myself up to not fall asleep or else I'll get a boot up my ass from every officer standing behind me. A few minutes later a guy in a wheelchair rolled in. His name was Kurt Fearnly. The guy had under-developed legs, being born without a lower spine. At the same time, this guy had won 4 paralympic golds, run probably a thousand marathons, crawled the gruelling 96km Kokoda trail, and has been awarded Young Australian of the Year (you'll have to look him up because I've missed out quite a lot).
I must admit that I'm a bit of a cynic and that I'm my own obsession so I find it hard to find anyone else amazing. But tonight, listening to this guy speak about his experiences and the events that brought him to achieve what he has today, and watching video footages of his races made me change my perspective a little. Never have I been truly inspired. Fearnly's courage, determination, and perseverance were uncanny. He literally crawled through bush and mud and rough ground, down slopes and up hills all because in his mind he just could not not do it. He crawled the 96Km track in 11 days, and everyday seemed harder than the last but each day he got up knowing that it will be over and in the night he would heal so that he could continue the next day.
He said in his speech that being unable to walk has made the choice of pursuing these challenges easier to make, and I suppose that's true. When you're stuck in a high ropes course where the only way down would be to fall and die or plod on towards the finish, it's not fun to choose the latter, but it's the only choice you can make if you want to survive. In this sense a physical diasability should serve to enhance courage. Limitations are not just barriers, they can be motivation to just do or die trying. Another thing he said tonight that I personally identify with was that if he was going to give up his life for something it might as well be something really tough, a challenge really worth the effort. I thought I'd tried my best in college, but now that I think about it I robably didn't, or else I would have achieved so much more; but nonetheless by the end of my senior year I had a whole world of opportunities waiting for me. Did I want to be a doctor? A teacher? a researcher? or... well... a soldier? All these options, all equally good they seemed to me then, and even now I think about the what ifs. Still, we try and face life with minimal regrets. I gave my life up for the military, and so far it has been quite an interesting journey. It has been hard most of the time, but it is not without its perks. I'm able to go to places I'd never even seen myself in, and do things I probably would never have gotten the opportunity to do. I see now that the tougher the climb, the better the view from the top. And every day that we sweat in training just prepares us for something worthwhile in the end.
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