Paralympians: Showing the Way

Despite often heartbreaking physical and mental impairment, paralypic athletes from across the world are demonstrating clearly in London 2012 that almost any adversity can be overcome, providing we have the will and determination to achieve great things.

Too often these days, we peoples of the West allow ourselves to be discouraged, deterred and demotivated by the feeble leadership of establishment politicians.

All too often we are induced into accepting second rank for our nations on the world stage, into accepting that we are powerless and unable to influence global trends, and must resign ourselves to the eclipse of our civilisation, the invasion of our lands and the genetic obliteration of our kind.

All too often we are made to feel unworthy in the way that disabled people were often made to feel unworthy in less enlightened times, but just as advocates for the disabled have garnered the courage to assert their worth as human beings, and just as many disabled people have striven to overcome their impairment and achieve magnificent feats of athletic prowess, we peoples of Europe can similarly re-assert our right to life and our pre-eminence as creators and culture bearers.

All that we need are leaders who have the will to see us succeed and who have the vision to see what we could be or what we might achieve.

Despite the politics that surround the Paralympics therefore, we should put such issues aside and focus instead upon celebrating the achievements of the individual athletes concerned and upon the inspirational aspects of the sporting events staged.

Just two generations ago we Europeans stood astride the world like a colossus and we can do so again, providing we exhibit the same willpower and determination as our Paralympic athletes!

By Max Musson © 2012

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