Motivational Monday

lewopschall
Mar 2, 2015
4 min read

Last week I let my friend Ross tell his story for Motivational Monday because his story applied to my theme. Today, I wanted to share another man’s story that has inspired me for years.

This is Gabe Castellanos. He went to college with me at Gonzaga University. I remember watching him walking around with sunglasses and a dog through campus. I immediately wanted to know his story (perhaps that’s the curious journalist in me).

One day I finally sat down with Gabe. I got chills as he told me he almost lost his life while in high school when he was on a road trip heading home, after visiting his sister in college. From the incident he discovered he was diabetic and lost his eye sight from the near death experience forever. Despite this tragedy, Gabe maintains one of the best outlooks on life that I know of. I hope his story gives you hope today, as it has done for me.

“You don’t have to let the past define who you will become” - me (Gabe) If I may take the liberty of interpretation, I’d like to modify George Bernard Shaw’s quote before I get into my thoughts. I think dreaming today may have a bad connotation, so I would like to change it to “Some look at things that are, and ask why. I look at things as they could be, and ask why not?”

I don’t think that this changes the meaning of what he is getting at in this particular quote. Through this reflection of sorts my hope is that you will see why this quote is a challenge to us, and how my own quote has become a reality in my own life. “Why?” I think this question plagues us as humans, why does a ball fall to the earth if I let it go from my hand? Why are we here on earth? why am I here on earth? Why did this bad thing happen to me? Whether we are asking God this or a close friend, sometimes there isn’t an answer. Why is there evil in the world? I know that I can’t answer that… its way above my pay grade. This week was my 9th anniversary of falling into a diabetic coma that ultimately left me without sight, and with a hard to manage chronic disease that in most cases, if unmanaged shortens your lifespan by at least 10 years. I was really caught up in the why the first couple of years. I was in shock of losing my sight. In shock of losing one of the most important senses in our human perception . How was I going to do anything without my sight? How was I going to relate to my friends in highschool? How was I going to do anything with my life? Why did this all happen? Why me? All of the questions swirling in my head I continued with my life one piece at a time. In turn asking 'why not' instead of 'why.' Why can’t I do things without my sight? Why can’t I relate to my friends in highschool? Why can’t I do great things with my life? And, the most difficult…why not me?

You see, I don’t think we are given things in our life that we can’t handle. Does this mean that things are all going to be sunshine and rainbows? No. my life is a testament to that, but it is what we do with those experiences of darkness. Do we ask why? Or why not? I think that moving from the 'why' mentality to the 'why not' mentality is akin to that of the movement from doubt to hope. Initially I started in doubt. I doubt that I can do anything as a blind person. I doubt that I can do great things because of my blindness. I doubt that my life will surmount to anything. Through seeing hope in the small things, whether it be getting one of your IV bags taken out because you don’t need it anymore, or the fact that you simply woke up today, there is something to be hopeful about. Once you start to see hope in these small things you start to recognize it in the bigger things. Eventually I was saying I hope that I can do things as a blind person. I hope that I can do great things with my life. I hope that my life will amount to something. When you have made this shift from doubt to hope it allows you to dream, but more importantly it allows you to accept. I’ve accepted that I am blind for a reason, do I know why, maybe, maybe not; to accept that I can and have done things since being blind that I never could have dreamed of; to accept that sometimes “why” is the wrong question to be asking. I will leave you with this thought and a question. My final thought is a statement that I have found great comfort and consolation in my hard and dark times because it gives me hope for the future. That is that you don’t have to let the past define who you will become. Start asking yourself 'why not' and having hope in the small things, and with that hope you can achieve your dreams.