This article is classified "Real"
This item in the story of wheelchairs is not a particularly funny bit, and
so we will dwell on it only briefly. There are some who believe there is a
reason for everything, and that those who have been put into the wheelchair
by whims of fate should be content in knowing that they are alive at all,
and should appreciate life for what it is. Those people need to have their
heads examined, preferably just after a large, heavy object has fallen upon
it.
However, they are not completely off course. Being in a condition which
necessitates a wheelchair allows one to reflect on the speed one has been
going through life. Up until that point, many who were at one time not in
need of a wheelchair didn't really spend enough time relaxing. They were
skiing, bobsledding, mountain climbing, driving a car, house cleaning,
horseback riding, hiking, hitch-hiking, or any number of other activities.
They may or may not have been enjoying life. They may or may not have been
stopping every now and then to smell the roses. Regardless, being confined
to a wheelchair forces one to stop and smell the roses, and appreciate life
from a new vantage point. It gives them an excuse to stop and smell the
roses, and sometimes that in itself is a disguised blessing.
Most who become confined to a wheelchair only realize this after a long
period of time in which they refused to accept the responsibility of the
first most important point about being in a wheelchair. However, by the
same token, just because life tells you to slow down, doesn't mean you give
up trying to get back to your comfortable cruising speed. If ever an
opportunity arises where with the proper exercise, equipment, help and
self-determination one can get out of the wheelchair, all efforts should be
put towards that endeavor, so long as these efforts do not interfere with
the most important point. In fact, the pursuit of the second most
important point could and should be a pursuit of the first most important
point, or else one will feel worse than when pursuing the third most
important point [1].
There are many who would argue that being "confined" to a wheelchair in
some ways actually allows you to go faster than before. This all depends
upon:
a) the speed at which you traveled through life prior to being
in the wheelchair, and
b) the speed at which you travel once confined to said chair.
Stereotypically "b" is considered to always be slower than "a" but this is
in all actuality only the case about half the time, and depends also on:
c) the attitude you are in both before and after.
It does sound corny, but it's entirely up to you.
This Galactic Guide is not intending to leave out those people who are born
in such a state as to be confined to a wheelchair, or those who for other
reasons are incapable of even hoping to achieve the second most important
point. For those users of wheelchairs, the object should be to concentrate
on the most important point of being in a wheelchair. Everything else,
including being angry at people not in wheelchairs writing long entries in
Project Galactic Guide about people in wheelchairs, should be irrelevant.
[1] Editor 8: If this puzzles you, go back to the "Wheelchairs" article
and read the summary at the end of it.