Trusting your judgment, learning how to take risks, believing in yourself, feeling authentic.
All these phrases are the common topics of books on business and life. Yet, for one life, they are more profound, more treacherous.
Martin Pistorius' book Ghost Boy is his autobiographical story of traveling from life to sleep to life again.
Pistorius was a lively young boy living in South Africa. One day in 1988 at about age 12, he came home ill. He couldn't eat. He became paralyzed. He could not speak. He slipped into a comatose state. The cause remains unknown.
But what is known is that Pistorius was largely unresponsive to his environment. He was helpless, with limited awareness. He was elsewhere.
But, one day he woke up.
At age 16 he became fully aware of his surroundings but utterly unable to interact. For nine long years, he understood everything around him, from the insipid children's television shows he was forced to endure to people's private conversations conducted in front of a boy they thought was lost to the world. The boy who could not move was back, but no one noticed.
A remarkable chain of events started with a massage therapist who did notice. She made sure others saw too and within a year, Pistorius was making a computer talk for him.
Imagine coming out of a world where there were no choices. Pistorius lived in a world where he couldn't choose food, answer questions, defend himself or reveal himself.
And then one day he could, but he had to learn how.
"…Gradually I've learned trust my own judgment, even if it is sometimes wrong…life is about shades of gray instead of black-and-white."
Ghost Boy is an uplifting, true story with a happy ending and life lessons that everyone can take to heart.
Ghost Boy, Martin Pistorius, Nelson Publishing, 2013.
