"If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?" Amy Purdy begins her TED Talk, "Living Beyond Limits" with these words. These seemingly simple, yet completely complex words. Purdy has quite a story: she lost both of her legs to meningitis, and, despite all odds, became a professional snowboarder.
Her story began bleak. She thought she would never be able to walk again. She strapped on bulky, unnatural prosthetics. She laid in bed for 3 months straight, simply so she didn't have to go out and face the world. One day, however, her viewpoint changed. She realized that she could make herself as tall or as short as she wanted to be, depending on who she was dating. Or that, when she snowboarded, her feet would no longer get cold. The optimism that Purdy took on her situation was so inspiring to me, and it made me put all of my minuscule problems into perspective. And as Purdy stands, tears in her eyes, smiling at the memory of her prosthetic legs flying down the mountain after she fell, still attached to her snowboard, I can feel her struggle. I can imagine the pain she went through, the humiliation, the heartache, just to get herself back up on that board. Not only did she get back up on her snowboard, but she had to design and build a special pair of feet in order to do so.
Let's see you top that, Shaun White.
Purdy hooks listeners in with deep thoughts and ideas, and she keeps us in with humor and heartwarming triumph. She relays the idea that, instead of living without borders, we need to challenge ourselves to take our borders and, rather than seeing them as limitations, we need to get creative and leap over those borders. That, right there, is an idea worth spreading.
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_purdy_living_beyond_limits.html
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