To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).
Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)

Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it does not make a sound”. Meaning that, basically, unless someone is there to witness something, that something does not exist. That is if you follow the Bishop’s thinking. Your seeing creates the reality. The other way around is also true: reality does not exist unless you create it.

The disasters and wars in the world exist for us, because we see the footage on our TV screens. The horror I am experiencing does not exist for others because they don’t see or experience it.

Now, sometimes, we believe what others tell us. Often because of their “authority”.

I almost believed a specialist doctor, an expert in his field, that Pádraig would have an “intolerable life” but that he could make other people’s life so much better by donating his organs.

Peter, about two thousand years ago, walked on water because he believed in himself. He believed he could do it and walk on water. When the winds became too strong and the waves too high, he began to doubt in himself, he became frightened, lost faith and hope, and he nearly drowned.

Have a look at what Pádraig managed to do over the past week. For me, he walked on water.

The first ‘first’ was pretty cool and has big potential.

Pádraig bent his knees and then pushed himself up a few times while semi-standing on a tilt-table. A brilliant, very functional exercise his therapists came up with recently.

That was wonderful. What he did next was even more spectacular.

We had asked Pádraig if he could do what he had seen someone else doing earlier in the week, someone who is also nonverbal: nodding and shaking his head for Yes and No answers. We had not tried this before because we never thought he could do it, given his relatively low head control. He surprised us. Again. – Despite the headband restricting his movements, he did it – for the first time since his accident. We will have to keep working on it. What a difference this will make for his communication!

Our reality is what we see and experience every day. It is not what some people are trying to tell us. People who seem to be somewhat out of touch with reality. Even though they see themselves as the experts.

Our reality is sometimes so surprising, so unexpected, and so brilliantly cool that walking on water doesn’t seem to be such a big deal anymore.

Once we learn not to be afraid of the wind and the waves, of what other people tell us, once we don’t allow them to make us doubt ourselves, our own believes, convictions, and capabilities, as well as our love of others, then we will be able to show the whole wide world that anything is possible, that giving up is not what we do, and that we can live our lives to the full. Walking on water is our easiest exercise.