Fake Power
Ten years ago I spent one year in a rehabilitation centre in China. There was a man, who was paralysed from the neck down, sitting in a wheelchair, his wife pushing it. It seemed to me that speaking was the only thing he could do in average Joe’s manner.
I had been in rehab for several months when I saw five therapists supporting him on a mat table as he was standing on his knees. His face was telling it was an extreme effort for him. I often saw him several times a day doing exercises with his physio- and occupational therapist. The exercise room was available for us from 8 am to 5 pm daily. Every guest had a personal assistant, who helped him to carry out his fitness program.
The facility was very simple and apart from one exercise bike, there was no fitness equipment. Nevertheless the impact of the exercise was so big that I begun to walk with a rollator after several months of whole day exercise.
As I left the rehabilitation centre the man, who ten months earlier was totally paralysed, sitting in a wheelchair, was standing on his own feet beside the mat table without any support. It means that a totally paralysed person can rehabilitate. In our system these people are planted in a wheelchair and are sent to live on pension. The society pays them tens of thousands of Euros year after year, although it would be possible to recover their motility. If this is not a crime against humanity what is?
I recall this thing now when I am trying to find for me a mobile standing aid. It should be so robust that one can even dance on it. I found one mobile standing device on the market, which has so much fine technique and single components, so that it doesn’t fit for my purpose. That’s why I thought, I could use a robust, manual standing frame and let someone do a suitable vehicle out of it. It would only need the installation of an electrical steering unit on the standing frame.
When I asked about it in the medical supply store, who sells the standing frame I was told that the installation of an electrical operating system on the standing frame would be ‘too complicated’ and they have no experience of it. The seller explained their negative answer also with responsibility issues. In my ear this sounded simply like this: The company don’t want to accept the responsibility that I would get a vehicle that suits my needs.
Today people make prosthesis that can be steered by the power of thoughts. In contrast to this background it is absolutely inapt to say that the installation of an electrical steering system is too complicated. Also in this matter the question is surely only about money when own profit is more important than promotion of creative work. With regard to the functioning of a society this kind of thinking is very harmful, as it nullifies the rehabilitation efforts in general.
Materialistic Competition
When I returned home from China ten years ago after one year rehabilitation my physical condition had improved immensely. At first I had to make a new rehabilitation plan for the authorities and respective application for further rehabilitation.
Two months passed by and because my matter did not proceed, I asked what is wrong. I found out that my papers had not proceeded one step from the rehabilitation unit due to thoughtlessness of the rehabilitation planner.
For this reason almost one year went by before I could start with my rehabilitation. The results I had attained in China were erased with the bureaucratic procedure and I had to start my rehabilitation from scratch again. But that was not the first time.
I have a feeling that in the past 35 years my motility would have recovered long time ago, if I would have had the necessary resources, and would have been able to follow freely the path that my inner navigator shows me.
Rehabilitation units should have no single bureaucrat, who evade own responsibilities and who think that serving clients is too complicated, when one should find individual solutions to enhance the personal power of the rehabilitees. Gorgeous rehabilitation centres, fitness equipment and countless therapy options are useless, if the regulations and norms – and especially the mastery of money – in societies nullify every good effort.
The economic crisis in the world is not caused by money or the lack of it. The reason is, because money is in the first place, not the currency that makes everything happen. Yet people treat and worship money, as if it were a living organism. In regard to the coexistence of people on this planet it causes huge damage that there is large groups of people, who think that money makes the world go round.
In Finnish there is an idiom, which is directly translated into English: ‘climb up ass first into a tree’. It is used to depict a situation, when someone is doing something without common sense, or in false order, or unnecessary complicated.
People are acting just like this – climbing ass first into a tree – when they let material things lead their lives. Money is a good servant but a bad master. Because money is our master, life on the Earth is like the struggle of Sisyphus.
Post Scriptum
I wrote this article to dismantle my frustration from having no control over this thing and being too dependent on the decisions of others. Now I am grateful that the medical supply store didn’t immediately begin to realise my thoughts. I was forced to search for other solutions for my mobility needs. I believe that God means it good with us, although the life often looks like the struggle of Sisyphus.