By Mark E. Smith
I have a home gym. Two or three nights per week, I go into that room in my house, put on old, sweat-crusted weight-lifting gloves, and start wailing away at the contraption. As it bangs and crashes, sounding like some sort of machine from the Industrial Revolution, I push, pull, and grunt. It’s a competition of me versus it. So, what drives me to keep working out, especially as a 46-year-old dad with cerebral palsy who could get away with taking the easy road at this point in life?
When I was an adolescent, I watched the greatest wheelchair racers of all time fly across my TV screen during events like the Boston Marathon and the 1984 Summer Olympics. They looked like gladiators. They had massive upper bodies, and all was squeezed into an ultralight racing wheelchair that they hurled down the road or around the track at insane speeds. Their triceps pumped the wheels like pistons.
Yet, I wasn’t in awe of them. Rather, I was inspired.
See, there’s a vast difference between being awed versus being inspired. When we’re awed, we never imagine that we can do what another person does. It’s like, That’s awesome, but I could never do that. However, when we’re inspired, we’re compelled to get out there and do it, no matter how rational or irrational the thought may seem. That band rocks – give me a guitar. This poetry is astounding – I need a pen. Her words are so eloquent – I’m learning to speak like her. That person has an amazing career – I’m going back to college. Inspiration moves us into action. In awe, we watch. With inspiration, we do.
I realized the profound difference between awe and inspiration in my adolescence, and in being inspired by the wheelchair racers I saw on TV, I said, I’m doing that! Of course, like a 12-year-old picking up a guitar at the Salvation Army with the intent of starting a band and becoming a rock star, I had no ability at that moment to truly become a wheelchair racer, especially given the severity of my disability. But, that’s the beauty of inspiration – it launches us toward something great. We may not know where we’re going to land in our attempt – did Jackson Pollock when he began dripping paint on canvas in 1947? – but we’re bound to go somewhere.
I pushed around in manual wheelchairs for years, struggling merely to become self-sufficient, literal miles from ever being a “racer.” It did, though, help lead me to weight lifting, which I excelled at. I couldn’t push a racing chair faster than a snail, but through tenacity in the gym, I could have an upper body that looked like I did! That spirit continues with me today every time I hit the gym: Why watch when I can do, and why not see how far I can get with my efforts?
All of us see people accomplishing seemingly amazing feats. Some take talent and some take years of hard work. Yet, the people doing them are merely people like each of us and, most often, if they’re doing it, we can take a shot at it, too. Don’t be awed by others; be inspired. After all, the only reason why others are where we’d like to be is because we simply haven’t tried – yet.
PowerchairDiaries 
Fantastic essay, Mark. I have followed you for years and your book is required reading in my nonprofit which is dedicated to serving fathers with special needs children (I have two sons who are disabled). I think this blog is one of your best, and it has inspired me 🙂 Thanks!