If you're disabled, and you're trying to achieve your dreams, accept the fact right now that you have to work 500 times more than the average bear next to you. Stop bucking for sympathy, put on your titanium legs, and run.
Interpretation
Overcoming disabilities requires immense effort and determination, far more than what is typically expected.
This quote emphasizes the extraordinary effort and resilience required by individuals with disabilities to pursue their dreams. It encourages them to reject sympathy and instead embrace their strength, compare themselves not to the limitations but to the ambitions they hold, and work tirelessly towards their goals, symbolized by the metaphor of 'putting on titanium legs' to run towards achievement.
In practice
During a motivational speech about perseverance and resilience.
I was able to walk at 5. I had to be able to walk in order to be mainstreamed into public school. And my father worked day and night to teach me how to walk. And I think what's so amazing about this is the fact that he was told that I would never walk. And he decided that he was going to try.
I believe very deeply in my soul that God paired me and my father purposely and that he knew that my father would give me the strength to be a person with disability that was proud, always held her head high, and was never, ever bitter.
The only way the magic works is by hard work. But hard work can be fun.
That's what it's all about. It doesn't matter if you climbed the Eiger's north face in two hours and forty-seven minutes or in two days. If it's your challenge, and you're happy with it, that's the most important thing.
I'm tough on myself in terms of the standards I want to live up to, but that's also part of my pleasure: Knowing you are being your fullest self. Being your fullest self is a lot of work.
My parents always used to tell us not to complain about things but do something about them, so 'Can't is not an option' was almost a way of life.
For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
When I've gone back to work, it's always with that sense of inevitability. That may be a complete delusion, but it's the one that I need to get out of bed and go about my business. That sense that I can't avoid this thing. I better just get on with it.
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