MISS OH Siew May, 38, walks with an awkward gait and speaks with great difficulty.
She was born with cerebral palsy, a condition caused by brain damage which affects her muscular control and coordination. Her disability has made her an easy target for taunts, cruel jokes and discrimination.
As if her lot in life were not bad enough, she has also experienced more than her fair share of tragedy and difficulty. A high fever rendered one of her four siblings mentally impaired while cancer robbed her of her doting father and her best friend.
However, Miss Oh chooses not to wallow in self pity but to chase and live her dreams. In 2005, she successfully climbed Mount Kinabalu in East Malaysia, which at 4,095m above sea level is one of the highest mountains in South-east Asia.
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
The longer I live, the more weight I attach to a man’s ability to manage and discipline himself.
The longer I live, the more firmly convinced I become that the essential factor which lifts a man above his fellows in terms of achievement and success is his superior capacity for self discipline.
Talent plays its part, of course, but neither talent nor aptitude is the difference.
There are those who profess to believe that the difference between one man’s achievement and another’s is largely a matter of luck. Don’t you believe it
Is the difference a matter of differing levels of intelligence? I believe not.
I have concluded that the quality which sets one man apart from another, the factor which lifts one man to every achievement to which he reasonably aspires while the other is caught in a slough of mediocrity for all the years of his life, is not talent, nor formal education, nor luck, nor intellectual brilliance, but is, rather, his greater capacity for self discipline.
Tony Melendez - a man born without arms, making the best of what he has to touch & inspire thousands of lives with his strength & courage. A true warrior who lives his talk.
“I see a person like you that has arms, that has everything, everything, and you say…I can’t, I can’t! Yes, you can…you can!
They have asked me: “Tony, where are the miracles?”…and I always say this: “I see your hand, a hand…and the fact that you are able to raise your hand… For me, that’s a miracle!”
Please don’t ever tell me that you can’t. Never tell me that, because…You, Yes, YOU! Can do so much more. Just get up and say: “I want…I can…I will move forward.”
You have a world out there waiting for you to say…YES!”
