The Power Of Determination

The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-
fashioned, pot-bellied stove. A little boy had the job of 
coming to school early each day to start the fire and warm 
the room before his teacher and his classmates arrived.
One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse 
engulfed in flames. They dragged the unconscious little boy 
out of the flaming building more dead than alive. He had 
major burns over the lower half of his body and was taken to 
the nearby county hospital.
From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious 
little boy faintly heard the doctor talking to his mother. 
The doctor told his mother that her son would surely die - 
which was for the best, really - for the terrible fire had 
devastated the lower half of his body.
But the brave boy didn't want to die. He made up his 
mind that he would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the 
physician, he did survive. When the mortal danger was past, 
he again heard the doctor and his mother speaking quietly. 
The mother was told that since the fire had destroyed so 
much flesh in the lower part of his body, it would almost be 
better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a lifetime 
cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.
Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not 
be a cripple. He would walk. But unfortunately from the 
waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just 
dangled there, all but lifeless.
Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day 
his mother would massage his little legs, but there was no 
feeling, no control, nothing. Yet his determination that he 
would walk was as strong as ever.
When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. 
One sunny day his mother wheeled him out into the yard to 
get some fresh air. This day, instead of sitting there, he 
threw himself from the chair. He pulled himself across the 
grass, dragging his legs behind him.
He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering 
their lot. With great effort, he raised himself up on the 
fence. Then, stake by stake, he began dragging himself along 
the fence, resolved that he would walk. He started to do 
this every day until he wore a smooth path all around the 
yard beside the fence. There was nothing he wanted more than 
to develop life in those legs.
Ultimately through his daily massages, his iron 
persistence and his resolute determination, he did develop 
the ability to stand up, then to walk haltingly, then to 
walk by himself - and then - to run.
He began to walk to school, then to run to school, to 
run for the sheer joy of running. Later in college he made 
the track team.
Still later in Madison Square Garden this young man who 
was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, 
who could never hope to run - this determined young man, Dr. 
Glenn Cunningham, ran the world's fastest mile!

By Burt Dubin
from Chicken Soup for the Soul 
Copyright 1993 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen