A NEWER ME

BE BRAVE TONIGHT By Samantha Reynolds http://bentlily.com/2012/03/05/be-brave-tonight/ Courage is not a genetic hand-me-down or a choice you can rely on in the moment it is a muscle if you do not use it it will shrink you will go to be brave one day and find you are floppy and unsure so try on your convictions start with your own echo the words that play in your head quicksand words telling you things like never stand up to yourself stare down the doubt in the pitch-black privacy of your darkest thought be gutsy remember that a shadow carries no weight rescue yourself and you will grow like a plant to sunlight bent towards valor. The old me wouldn’t have pushed a walker along a littered hospital corridor. A hospital corridor, after all, is no place for a blind person pushing a walker. Too many hazards: cleaning carts to the left or right, frail patients creeping silently, nurses checking their iPhones with backs turned, lab carts, blood pressure machines, intravenus poles! Fear of embarrassment, of being singled out as “blind”, of being banned from hallways by hospital authorities. If I ever worked on changing that, it was never a conscious action. But yesterday--when I wheeled David’s walker out into the hall, intending to park it outside his door, to motivate the staff to help him walk to lunch rather than taking the easier path of wheeling him, narrowly missing a silent woman who, not without cause, barked: “Watch where you’re going!”—I was thoroughly surprised to find that the old me had been replaced. The new me said: “I’m sorry. I’m a blind person.” It was true, has always been true, but this time I was only sorry that I had been careless, and I wasn’t a bit embarrassed. The new me simply shrugged when the offended party made a rude reply. And I noticed, later in the day, when I carefully wheeled the walker into the hall, that the same offended party politely said, “I’ll just go around you.”