Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Learning as I stumble

I'm beginning to love my runs with the RunningHour group. There are two groups: the visually challenged & the intellectually challenged. So the volunteers who are in this group acts as motivators to them- to encourage and strive for excellence, beyond what anybody thought they are capable of. 

It's truly a fun experience to be with them, thrilling too. I'm beginning to feel a sense of excitement every Friday night, coz I know I will wake up early on Saturday morning and have something meaningful to do. It's beginning to make my Friday night party with whoever less fun and suddenly, waking up Saturday morning more thrilling. 

On my recent run, I gained something new. I had a breakfast with the visually challenged group- whom I frankly feel more safe with. Maybe because they are older than the intellectually challenged who are mostly teenagers. I never really know how to fit in with the younger crowd for the longest time, until my niece was born. 

Anyways, I was there sitting with this married couple, both blind. They had 1 son, perfectly normal and intelligent. As I sat there across them, I heard how they talked about their son with affection, laughing and occasionally breaking into a smile at the thought of him. The joy of being a parent is obviously not robbed away from them by fate. 

And I sat there, envying. How on earth do they even grow old together, have a child in their condition? There are people with perfect body condition and yet, are incapable of taking care of their child. I questioned their love, teasing them. But the husband answer blew me away.. "When she can't find her items, I can. When I don't, she can" - in a gist, he wanted to tell me how they complement each other. How they work together and grow together. I heard their affection for each other. It was more than just love. It was just something more than that. 

He didn't say about-"oh I love how she looks, how she smells" or blah blah.. But how they complement each other. 

I had always believe in love. I'm a firm believer in love. That you fall in love first and then, you work things out and grow old together. But what her husband told me is a whole lot opposite. They didn't have the chance to "fall in love at the first sight" or fantasy like that. They work and grow together and found a ground where they realize how they needed each other, how it was safer to be together than apart. 

How can you not be moved by that? I found my meaning of life. Now, I need to start working it out bit by bit, by myself. Slowly but surely, I will find myself that I've lost.