No Matter How Bad Life May Seem...

... while there is life, there is hope.

Stephen Hawking should not be.

The man can't feed himself, much less work a normal day job.  Without the help of a legion of technologists, tools and sacrifices from those around him, he would have died long ago.  Indeed, he should have died.  

The world doesn't need another burden.  To carry those who can't lift themselves up is a burden to mankind, a defiance of nature's order - is it not?

Yet Stephen Hawking lives, wills to live, and brings others to life.  His imagination is limitless; indeed, both his mind and his capacity for humanity have grown beyond the confines of his withered body to the point where he is, truly, more than a man - he's Stephen Hawking.

He has opened space and time to us and made the cosmos accessible, like Prometheus bringing down the fire of knowledge.

Those who help keep Hawking alive don't do so as an act of charity, providing a brief hospice for his mind.  They do so because he enriches their lives and those of so many; indeed, his work may, in the fullness of time, empower us all.

In his story lies the secret spark that brings light to the heart of darkness; the will to live, to build, the urge to love, to give, the capacity to adapt and, in collaboration, be more than any one person is capable of being.

What made Stephen Hawking possible is everything so many people these days stand against.  Really think about that for a second.

I can't think of anyone, not the most hard-hearted, cynical people I know who disdain the broken shell that is Stephen Hawking as a waste, a faux-celebrity or elitist.  Everyone admires the impossible that he has achieved, especially because it should not be possible.  We wonder or shrink from the light he has brought to our world.

Despite the growing gap of body and of communication, Hawking's support-network has never given up on him.  He has never given up on humanity.

That's how we win.  That's the only way we win.

It's okay to despair for mankind; it often seems as if civilization itself is crumbling under the weight of too much history.  

Take hope, though - it's not in strength of arms, the immobility of tradition nor the thickness of blood that our future lies.

Why fear tides at shores?  We, too, are the ocean.  Life finds a way.