Welcome to Holland

A high school classmate of mine has a child with very severe disabilities.  She shares her experiences on her blog and this has opened my eyes to many of the trials and joys of raising a child with disabilities.  One of the first things I read on her blog was this:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by
Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html

I think that this not only applies to parents, but to anyone who has had to change their plans because of any type of hardship (think of Kevin Ware).  We either spend our time mourning the fact that our life isn't what we had hoped, or we make the most of it.  Even more however, if we can educate those in our lives as to why we are happy and let them know that we have adjusted, then maybe perhaps more people will be happy in Holland.

Just for fun.

I saw this at NETA this year and it is just too good not to share.  Enjoy.

Texting

Just watched this talk -very interesting.  It made me think of many a Facebook thread I have read in the last 6 months about how texting is killing language skills.  I love the speakers optimism and how he disproves the naysayers.  I really agree with him that texting is not destroying language skills nor is it the scourge of communication.  I am still not too good at texting like I talk.  It is hard for me to not write in complete sentences with punctuation - thanks to Mrs. Pearson my 7th grade English teacher.  However, just because I prefer to text in a more formal way does not make me smarter (although it might make me appear so, but that is another post entirely).

Yo-Yo

I have always loved to yo-yo.  This guy takes it to a new level.  What I love most is not that he is awesome, but that he followed his passion, even though it wasn't something his family/society thought was valuable.  It just goes to show that if you follow your passion and work hard at making yourself the best you can, success will follow.

Hyper lapse

Just ran across this and my mouth literally fell open. I love Google maps and this is amazing. I need to make a video of my own...  Reminds me of  the wilderness downtown. 

Robots! I want one.

Just watched a great TED Talk about personal robots. This guy (why are robots almost always guys?) looks like a ton of fun and would be great to have around the house.  My kids would go nuts playing with it.  I wonder if it is iPhone 5 compatible though.  I am still frustrated with Apple for changing the format of the plug.  It will take a while before everyone is able to switch over to the new connection. Anyway, watch the clip, it is super cool.

Lions

Just watched this TED talk.  What inspires me most is not the simple idea he had to keep the lions away, but that this simple idea changed the lives of so many.  This video is more proof that to be great you don't need to be old, rich, well connected, or any other sort of privileged status.  Instead, you just need to believe in yourself and do your best.  If you do that, greatness will be inevitable.