Caught in my body

We need it every day, to live, to survive, and to stay independent - our body. We need our legs and feet to walk, our hands to do something, to grab something. But what would you do if you lose the control of your body? When others do these things for you? They feed you, they take you out of bed, they move you from one point to the other? This can happen when you get older, and weaker. When your body doesn’t want anymore what you want. But it can happen to all of us at every moment of our lives.

You maybe remember that once I wrote about Samuel Koch who had an accident on a German TV show and since then he’s paraplegic. He wanted to jump over moving cars with special jumping stilts. He did this for several years, he loved that and never had anything happened. But in the show he fell, and even surgery couldn’t cure him. He is now working on his acting career, praying a lot and keeps asking why this had to happen to him. The accident happened in December 2010. He is now 25 years old. But he doesn’t stop fighting, life goes on.

So this can happen to all of us, at any time. An accident, a disease, and then from one moment to the other we need someone to take care of us. Some people are unable to move from the start of their life. Their families have to take care of them. Be there 24/7. What kind of life is this? I heard about a man named Mark O’Brien, a poet, paralyzed from the neck down due to polio. Last year there was movie called “The Sessions” made about him and his life. How must it be like, when you are unable to do anything on your own? When you are just lying in your bed? At least he can talk to people, but he can’t touch them. The touch is the most important sense we have, we can’t survive without love and without touching and being touched.

It starts when you are a baby. You love it when your parents hold you in your arms. This is the only way to let you fall asleep. You need the touch when your Mom changes your diapers, or feed you. Through all your life, touches are the main things you need. It shows that there is someone who loves you and takes care of you. In these days we live right now, people don’t wanna show love that much, don’t wanna share it that much anymore. We touch others less than a few years ago, but this doesn’t mean that we don’t need it. And especially not that we don’t want it, does it?

But imagine you just can’t touch the person you love? As much as you want to, you simply can’t? Or you can’t do anything when you don’t like to be touched by someone? How would you feel? When I read about the movie, I have to admit I haven’t seen it yet, these questions popped up in my mind. It must be like you’re trapped in your own body. When you can’t control it, can’t tell it what you want to do. It must be very hard and I guess we should think about this more often. Think about how lucky we are, that we can use our body the way we want to, that we have the chance to touch the people we love, and that we are not completely and utterly at somebody’s mercy.

Watch here the official trailer of “The Sessions”