The liberty of limbs & mobility
This is a disclaimer that what you may, or may not read below, is a sprout of motive I just felt after a quick 30-minute workout of generically realising how blessed I am, of being able to physically do whatever I please with every muscle in my body. I think, often as humans, we tend to underestimate the freedom of our arms and legs, hands and feet, and fingers and toes, until it’s snatched away, just because that’s simply our destiny.
Practically, my other half recently lost mobility on the left side of his body. At 25, he woke up in recovery from a simple operation and was told that he’d be partially paralysed for the rest of his life.
This piece of writing isn’t to instill empathy or just apply an anecdote of drama into your day, but simply for everyone to acknowledge and appreciate the minor yet majour liberties and luxuries that most of us just take for granted. When we want to walk to the bathroom, we don’t think of signaling the limbs in our legs to move, but we just get up and do it. The complexity of our bodies and machines that are constantly at work to make sure we go about our days with maximum ease, in my opinion, should get a little bit more credit.
I think at this point it’s fair to say that health awareness is really the hot topic of this year for all of us. Whether it’s the BBC emphasising on how dire “the situation” has become in the UK, or how Portugal “has the worst numbers in Europe”, it all narrows down to the fact that as a global population, our health is at risk, and Covid is this generation’s cryptonite. While we’re all just finding ways of letting time pass until we’re free to move about again, I just want to highlight the freedom that many of us already have, which is the liberty of health. If you love the ones that care most for you, be kind to them, and put out any cigarette you find yourself holding. We all enjoy our personal delights (Prawn Cocktail — Walkers), which in my opinion is absolutely fine to indulge in, but just stay cautious of taking your masterpiece of a body for granted. If you’re blessed enough to be able to move right now, go do a few jumping jacks! Because if there comes a point where you can’t, you’re going to wish you listened to me :)
