Life on Purpose

I recently returned from a two week vacation at our family cabin in the lush forest on the banks of the Gallatin River outside Yellowstone National Park. With Internet service just slightly better than dial-up and no TV, my best options for entertainment were reading books and solving crossword puzzles.

On my reading list this year was a book called “Me Before You,” which also happens to be a popular movie at the moment. “Me Before You” follows a woman named Louisa who is hired as a companion to a severely disabled, albeit exceedingly handsome and wealthy, quadriplegic man named Will. Without giving too much away, over the course of working with Will, Louisa falls in love with him and wishes to spend the rest of her life with him. Will, unable to do the things he used to as an able-bodied man and unable to love her in the way he desires, rejects Louisa’s love but leaves her with the financial means to live the life she’s always wanted. After reading “Me Before You,” I watched the new Netflix movie, “The Fundamentals of Caring,” (haltingly, due to the slow Internet) about Trevor, a young man with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy who travels to the World’s Deepest Pit and other road-side attractions with his recently-hired caregiver Ben, played by Paul Rudd. Along the way, they pick up Dot, a young woman (Selena Gomez) hitch-hiking to college, who goes on a date with Trevor after he courageously asks her out to dinner at a nearby diner. Continuing on with the disability trend, I then began reading “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen”, a book by Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane that the film “The Theory of Everything” is based on. Although doctors told Stephen that motor-neuron disease (also known as ALS) would take his life within two years, Jane decided to marry him anyway. Without Jane’s affectionate care and support, Stephen Hawking would have been unable to live an independent life or make such tremendous contributions to cosmology, especially regarding black holes and the theoretical underpinnings of the universe.

Whether you agree with his theories on the universe or not, Stephen Hawking has undoubtedly made huge contributions to the world. Will and Trevor, however, were content to sit at home alone in front of the TV watching obscure foreign films (Will) or travel shows about road-side attractions (Trevor). As someone with physical limitations that fall somewhere between Trevor and Will, I can tell you that spending every day in front of the TV by myself would bore me to death. In a sense, both Trevor and Will were just sitting around waiting to die. Shortly after his diagnosis, Stephen Hawking went through a period of deep depression when he too sat around waiting to die. Fortunately, Stephen’s friends and a girl named Jane encouraged him to live whatever life he could, and what a full life it became! In one way or another, Will, Trevor and Stephen found romantic love despite their physical limitations, displaying the intrinsic value each person has regardless of physical ability. What “Me Before You” and “The Fundamentals of Caring” miss is the drive we all have to make a contribution to the world. We each want to use our gifts and abilities to make a difference, whether it’s through work, raising a family, serving a cause or pursuing a favorite hobby. Sure, it’s a bit cliché, but I truly believe that God created each one of us with a purpose in mind. A purpose bigger than sitting in front of the TV. A purpose achieved not in lonely isolation, but in partnership with others. If you know your purpose for being alive, give it all you’ve got! If you don’t, enlist those who love you to help you discover it. “Differently-abled” or not, you have something to contribute to the world and we’re all anxiously waiting to see it.