Neuronote #2

On Wednesday we were given the opportunity to attend the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies practice. The Rolling Grizzlies are a group of guys that are athletic, entertaining, and very inspiring. The individuals who make up the team all have different backgrounds, lifestyles, and goals, however there are two things they all share; they love the game of basketball and they play in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA). For those of you who think the words disabled or paralyzed entails that someone is unable to compete or perform in an athletic sense get in contact with me and I’ll take you to the next practice and be more than happy to show just how wrong you are. We watched them practice for two hours, and I honestly hadn’t realized that even 30 minuets had gone by because I was so engaged and amazed with what I saw. I don’t know about you, but I played baseball, basketball, and football my whole life growing up, practice after practice. With my memories and knowledge of basketball I can tell you that their practice is just as intense and overwhelming. They did suicides, lay-up drills, and even free throw drills! Then they ran a full scrimmage and if I wasn’t already amazed by how they maneuvered around the floor and handled the basics of the game, you better believe five minutes into the scrimmage my jaw was on the floor. I can personally tell you that they are good and make it look so easy, yet once you sit down in one of their chairs and try to play the way that they do you quickly learn the term easy is the last word going through your head.

Experiences like this are the sole reason why I feel so strongly about the importance of altering our societies overarching stigma about those we deem “disabled” or “handicapped”. Having a disability does not mean that you are any less valuable or ABLE than someone who does not. Being able to watch these guys play and then interact with them afterwards was such a blessing for me. I am a firm believer in the timing of things and everything having its purpose and reason and for me this experience helped remind me of a few things. I have had a lot going on in my personal life over the past month or so and I have been trying to deal with them as best as I can, but life can be tough. I’ve handled it decently well, however I’ve whined, complained, and felt sorry for myself more than I’d like to admit. The whole time I was watching their practice my thoughts were swarming throughout my head. The things that some of these guys have gone through is lightyears beyond my worst day. Yet here they are giving every ounce of energy they have just to play and compete in a game that they love. Not only do we need to be better and do better by those who have been labeled as “disabled” or “handicapped” but we need to learn from them and put ourselves in their shoes. For example, how many of you get so so angry when you get stuck on the interstate because of construction and you end up losing 40 minuets sitting and waiting to get passed it, and you are so mad because you had somewhere to be or because your sick of sitting in the car etc. Have you ever thought about how blessed you are that once you do make it through the traffic and arrive at your destination you can simply open the door, put your feet on the ground, stand up and walk away? This experienced reminded me to never take anything for granted no matter how small it is. Be thankful for what you can do and when anger or frustration tries to seep in because something doesn’t go to plan remember that someone somewhere would kill to walk in your shoes even on your worst day. This also reminded me that our focus as therapist cant revolve around just trying to help our clients learn enough to just get by, but to challenge them and encourage them to exceed expectations and to awe those who expect them to just accept the title “disabled” because from where I was sitting the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies are a lot of things and the word disabled isn’t even close to being one of them.