SIGNIFICANCE: A MEDILIVES STORY

MediLiVes
MediLiVes
Nov 7 · 6 min read

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident”.

The above quote by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, often also attributed to Mahatma Ghandi, to whom it was most probably familiar, is about the necessity of grasping the courage of self-leadership to lead your conditional self to be your true self; to succeed in being yourself and of proving by irrefutable demonstration the significance of being you; the significance of every ‘you’ being their own ‘you’, of every ‘me’ being their own ‘me’… and of doing so against the self-limiting assumptions of a world-herd of clever, clever naysayers.

Great leaders are amazing! They amaze people! They amaze themselves! They amaze people by simply communicating how people can discover within themselves their own limitless power to amaze themselves.

Great leaders are always people who, having discovered who they and everybody else really are when all the onion-skins of conditioning have been peeled away, have been astonished by the depth and the breadth of every human being’s inner resources. They never cease to be amazed by the quality and quantity of the inexhaustible courage freely available to all of us because it is already in all of us. Followers can only have faith in those leaders who unstintingly demonstrate their absolute faith in their followers’ freedom to lead themselves. The true leader is thus a true servant.

These, the great leaders, have learned the art of amazement by having been amazed by themselves; they are dazzled by the human potential for self-perfection that leads them to be leaders. Leaders’ ambition is selfless yet all-encompassing; it is to serve their vision of leading others to illuminate their own visions. Having been amazed by the liberating power of their vision of the future their only aim is to lead others to the enlightenment of who they truly can be. The true leader is a pathfinder to human unity; not a manipulator of inhuman uniformity.

This is the irresistible power of true leadership for the simple reason that, underneath all our conditioned fears, whom any one of us can truly be is simply whom every one of us already truly is.

Such amazing leaders direct people, point the way, to the personal paths that can lead them out of the physical, intellectual, social, emotional and economic labyrinths which they have been conditioned, habituated, to accept as their own absolute reality; labyrinthine prisons of the human condition that need neither locks nor walls, neither bars nor keys for the simple reason that such prisons are only imaginary.

As Richard Wagner said, “Imagination creates reality”. If your imagined “reality” isn’t working out for you then your solution is easy: create one that really will!

Let me tell you a story:

This is the true story of a little African-American girl who, against all the circumstances of her birth and despite having to face life-odds conventionally recognised as being insurmountable, made it her life’s work to overcome those odds, to conquer those demeaning conventions, to forge her own destiny and prove to the world that she was a free woman, a free human being: a winner. This little girl’s name was Wilma Rudolph.

Miss Rudolph was born prematurely in Saint Bethlehem in the then deeply segregated Tennessee, USA on June 23, 1940. At birth she weighed only 4.5 pounds (about 2.0 kilos). Her chances of survival were, to say the least, touch and go.

Soon after her birth she contracted scarlet fever. This poor child also contracted pneumonia. Nobody outside of her family held out much hope of her ever amounting to anything; just another ignorable little black kid.

At the age of five Miss Rudolph contracted the polio virus, also known as infantile paralysis, which causes muscle weakness, notably in the legs. She recovered from the polio but, having lost significant strength in her left leg and foot, had to wear a leg-brace, a caliper, until she was twelve. Nobody outside of her family held out much hope of her ever amounting to anything; just another ignorable little black kid.

But caliper or not young Wilma was determined to play with the other kids. “Would you look at her!” said the naysayer know-it-all herd; “Who does she think she is?” they ridiculed her.

But her family didn’t ignore or ridicule her: they massaged her leg every day. Even so she had to wear an orthopedic shoe to support her foot for another two years. Her mother also took her fifty miles by bus for treatment every week to the Meharry Medical College (now Nashville General Hospital at Meharry) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Eventually Miss Rudolph tired of the leg-brace. She took it off and started running her heart out in the freedom of being able to do so. “No! No! No!” said the outraged know-it-alls, “You must not do that! Listen to us and do as we say! We know better than you! Who the heck do you think you are?”

But Miss Rudolph would let her freedom be attacked, not even if it was driven by the self-supposed “concern” of other people. She was her own woman and always would be.

She was a natural athlete and became excellently proficient at basketball and track.

At the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, the unstoppable Miss Rudolph, then only sixteen years old, won a Bronze Medal in the Women’s 4x100m Relay.

Four years later at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy, she won three Gold Medals — in the Women’s 100m Sprint; the Women’s 200m Sprint and the Women’s 4x100m Relay.

Not bad for a little sick girl whom the know-it-all world, in its infinitely ignorant lack of wisdom, assumed to be a no-hoper.

The then President, John F. Kennedy, invited her to the White House for a private audience. On coming home to national adulation for her achievements she insisted that any celebration would have to be desegregated or she wouldn’t attend.

In 1993 Miss Rudolph received the USA’s National Sports Award. This award is given to “A female athlete who exhibits extraordinary courage in her athletic performance; who demonstrates the ability to overcome adversity; who makes a significant contributions to sports and who serves as an inspiration and role model to those who face challenges to overcome them and to strive for success at all levels”.

Wilma Rudolph, her life well-lived, died of a brain tumor on November 12th, 1994.

So what’s this got to do with MediLiVes?

Everything!

What did Miss Rudolph have that so few others have? Nothing! It’s just that most people are socially trained — “authoritatively” conditioned by those conditioned to be “authoritative” — to believe that they have a duty to maintain other people’s conditioning i.e. to support, defend and strengthen other people’s learned assumptions of their personal limitations.

So how did Miss Rudolph decide to grasp the self-inspiring personal freedom upon which so few others decide?

She simply decided that nothing nor nobody would ever prevent her from being all that she could be. She decided, against all the odds of ignorance, never to allow herself to be forced into becoming anybody less than her true self.

Miss Rudolph would not allow herself to be ignored, ridiculed or put down by anybody. Fighting their “fire” with her Fire! she rationally ignored irrational ignorance. She rose above it. She fought back, not by attacking others’ weaknesses, but by finding her own true strength. The unstoppable Miss Rudolph, by the irresistible example of simply being herself, led others to believe in themselves.

If a human being like Wilma Rudolph could overcome any and all of the disadvantages that life had thrown at her; if she could turn all that irrationally imposed negativity into positive strength; if she would never let any challenge stand in the way of her challenging herself… then ask yourself a simple but life-necessary question: “Who or what is holding me back from personally deciding to take every action to be all that I, unique as I am — and as unique as is every human being — could be?”

This must be the attitude of all of MediLiVes’ companions if we are to serve our declared mission to do all that we can to work for, to do everything that we can, to support and promote the universal human right of access to healthcare.

As Ayn Rand asks: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?”

John McKay, Chief Operating Officer, MediLiVes

MediLiVes

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MediLiVes

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