The Reason Behind “A Reason to Carry On”

The Reason Behind “A Reason to Carry On”

Despite a voice from the Deep crying out “don’t do it”, I did. I followed the fun crowd  to a roller skating rink and tried to emulate a young boy doing tricks.  I wound up in hospital with a compound spiral fracture,  in unfathomable pain, then onto crutches for one year.  I was always running, a pure example of someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and now it was enforced imprisonment and yet it became the most valuable year of my life.  

Suddenly I understood what it meant to be helpless, disabled, alone. I loved ballet classes and read books on spirituality and psychology avariciously. My world was now limited to as far as I could gaze from my window, where the nursing home opposite loomed large.  It was as if I was being guided to my purpose in life, the hard way. Perhaps I was not attuned to the obvious. I jumped from one course and profession to another, looking down different paths that were clearly not mine to follow. 

My problem had been, I hadn’t listened to my heart and hadn’t found who I was, until now.  I often said that If I had my life to do over, I would have tried to become a ballerina. Now I would do second best, teach exercises with the benefit of my ballet background, to people with special needs and disabilities.

The road I travelled on was far removed from Opera Houses and dance studios. Many of the nursing homes I visited were not welcoming.  A smell of disinfectant would have been preferable to the permeating stench of urine and vomit that slapped you in the face, as soon as you entered.  In some, the people looked extremely frail and unwanted. But, as soon as I put on my music, the whole atmosphere transformed. I became the performer on stage and my audience came alive. No performer could have had greater satisfaction and reward. Bent bodies straightened up in their chairs.

They extended their arms and hands emulating the finest prima ballerina.  Sour expressions changed to memories of better days. They were moving to the beat, they became animated and forgot their pains and for that moment, became productive, joyful and engaged in life. When I played music from the war years, they sang along and swayed, “oh how we danced on the night we were wed”… I knew I was giving all I had and I was appreciated, and floated out of the homes after each class.  This was what life was about.  I was exhausted, went to bed early and weekends went to ballet classes and my old life had been another world. 

I went to day centres for people with psychiatric issues and came across almost every psychological syndrome and people with varying degrees of Alzheimer’s and dementia.  I had studied in an university Behavioural Psychology Course.  I was even engaged to teach exercises to adults with the mental capacity of babies, and got excited when I saw a smile. It turned out to be wind and all my efforts were to no avail.  

It wasn’t until I met Henry in a Hostel for psychiatric ex-offenders, who was desperate for  my attention, that I was inspired to write my book.  He and his “colleagues” were much keener to talk about their lives, than exercise. In prison they needed to work out at the gym to build muscle strength, but weren’t  interested in other forms of exercise.  I listened to life stories that truly broke my heart.  Many were illiterate but street wise and emotionally intelligent. 

Henry related how he fell down drunk in front of a pub, when a girl put out her hand to help him up.  “What’s the point, I might as well just start using drugs again, until the end. You get up, just to fall down again.” He was weary of the repeated pattern in his life.  He was only in his mid-thirties.  It wasn’t just the disappointments, his life was very violent. He suffered from debilitating headaches having been close to death, when someone tried to beat his brains out. I was witnessing and hearing about lives that I was never exposed to except for the movies. 

I call him Henry, as he was my Professor Higgins and I, Eliza Dolittle, the simple student.  When you experience life with people at the survival level, it opens your horizons and touches your heart, not just to be grateful for your own privileged life, but sparks wonder about the bigger picture.  I was inspired to dig more deeply and began to attend Bible studies.  I looked at people I was meeting everyday with different eyes and began questioning the meaning of their lives and how they wound up where they were and if their lives could have been different.  

Were they like the old me? Had they missed that inner voice, and not followed their hearts? Were there too traumatised by their childhoods, or pre-programmed to pursue the path they chose.  Were they too stuck in their past to believe in a different future?  What about people who are born mentally or physically handicapped?  Is there more to life than we can see?  I wrote “A Reason to Carry On” to help find the answers. 

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Vony Eichel was born and bred in New York where she attended C.W.Post College of L.I.U., but lived all her adult life in London. She explored many careers; working as a Blue Badge Tour Guide, studied for the Stock Exchange and Finance Industry, Behavioural Psychology, Systems Analysis, but finally found her calling as an Exercise Therapist for the Elderly, Disabled, those with Special Needs and Psychiatric Ex-Offenders. Her passions are ballet and wild swimming. She lives on a beach in West Sussex, UK.

A REASON TO CARRY ON

Henry, a cockney arsonist and psychopath, was the catalyst to Vony’s enlightenment. Ironically, she started out as the teacher and ended up as Eliza Doolittle, the naïve student. Perhaps Henry’s unwitting mission was to help others by telling their story. Angry at a God following the death of a sibling, Vony initially rejected religion. Eventually she realized that religion, science and philosophy are compatible; without investigating them all, the answer to a meaningful life would be incomplete.

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Category: On Writing