theory of relativity

It has come to my attention that a good deal of patients of traumatic injury are not pushing themselves to get better, that many of them lack the motivation to dedicate their time and energy to therapy.


Most of why I write what I write in this site is to help exactly those who need that extra push (and I can sometimes be one of them) to do just that little bit more. However, I want to also give any of you who are really not doing much at all to your own betterment a gentle -- but firm -- reminder that you must find the spark in you to do something. This is also why a lot of my posts aren't necessarily suggestions for therapeutic techniques but are motivational in nature, because the most important aspect to healing and rehab is the determination to keep pursuing it.

Not to go all nerdy or professor on you, but I'd like to explain a concept that has to do with the physical nature of time and how it relates to change. Imagine yourself walking down alongside a train track. You're going at a certain speed, perhaps two miles per hour. If the train then comes, going in the same direction as you, and slows to your same exact speed, the train, relative to you, will seem to be even with you at all times, never surpassing or falling behind you.


However, if you stopped walking and the train continued running at 2mph, it would pass you by -- and to all the people on that train, you'd be going backwards, even though to you, you are standing perfectly still.


What does this have to do with anything?


It has everything to do with everything. In life, we are all walking down the sides of train tracks, and the train that runs on that track is the train of time. As children, we sprint ahead of that train and continue running ahead for a while. Often, after finishing school, people will hop onboard the train, plateauing at their level of personal development. I'd say the majority of people are on the train -- but then for a few of us who ran at the speed of the train trip and fall (i.e., have a traumatic injury), the train passes us. The people on the train (society at large) can look out the window and see that we've fallen way behind, as they plunge ahead.


If we don't pick ourselves back up, dust off our knees, and start walking again, we start going backwards relative to time.


Do you understand what this means? There is no staying still! In order to stay the same, you've got to run at the same speed as everyone else on that train, keep up with time. This is maintenance. In order to become even better than you were, you've go to go faster, do more.


By doing nothing, you are going backward.


You cannot do nothing. Aside from this physical metaphor, it is literally true that if you completely neglect your affected body, it will get worse. This is why people in general have to work out on a regular basis to keep fit -- without that maintenance, the body becomes as lazy as the mind and declines. And it's even more exaggerated in the case of bodies dealing with traumatic injury. Is that what you want? Really? Because if you continue to bum around feeling down because it sucks to be the victim of a traumatic injury (which, to your credit, of course it is), rather than acting on your strength and your positive energy to push yourself to improve a sucky situation into an all-right situation and then into a good situation and perhaps an outstanding situation? You're conceding defeat. And choosing the path of a victim, which only aggravates the sucky.


Be honest with yourself: Is that what you want?


If the answer is no, start pushing yourself off the ground. Now -- there's no time to lose.


To our healing,
Pamela