In sport, winning and losing are known to be so close, and yet there is a clear distinction. The blink of an eye can decide whether I leave the competition venue as a radiant winner or a disappointed loser. I prepare myself for many things and hold fate largely in my own hands. But many unforeseen events can also happen. Luck and misfortune are very close. One small mistake, one lapse of attention and I can fail in my attempt. From the moment of triumph full of bliss, to bitter disappointment and on to almost unbearable tragedy, sport offers us the whole range of emotions. We observe how sportspeople accept their fate and master the challenges, and we follow them through their ups and downs. They thus seem to reflect the challenges and blows of fate that we all face in our lives, and bring us under their spell.
Just like sportspeople, people with disabilities are often seen as ‘masters of their fate’. For many, a disability, whether it is from birth or caused by some event, suggests something bad, a tragedy, and always brings with it a certain heaviness. For many it seems to be a heavy ‘stroke of fate’. But is it really fate when misfortune strikes us, or may we treat chance as worthy of determining our fate, as Sigmund Freud once put it? Could it also be called fateful chance or chance destiny? There is probably no clear answer and it is left to the interpretation of each individual. No matter what you call it, there are often several circumstances that come together and lead to a result. Causes lead to an effect. Accidents are not ‘caused’ for no reason. Objectively seen, the causalities are sometimes shockingly simple. One wrong step, a miscalculation, a vitamin deficiency at birth, and so on. Sometimes fate (or chance) challenges us without our being able to consciously influence it, and sometimes it is we who challenge fate. Although an accident is usually governed by external influences, it is often a human action that precedes it. This also applies to luck or fortune, which on the scale of fate is opposite to misfortune, for example when I first think about filling in the lottery ticket, before I could even have a chance, however small, of winning.
If we ‘chase’ good luck, things can usually go well, but suddenly fortune can ‘turn round’ to misfortune and show us quite a different face.
Whether we end up in a wheelchair because of a daring act or because of some other unfortunate circumstances, or from birth, the result is the same: it affects your whole future life.
But of course a calamity does not always result in disability, and by its very nature it can affect any of us at any time and in any place in a variety of ways, and leave deep scars.
‘Happiness often comes from attention to small things, misfortune often from neglecting little things.’
Wilhelm Busch
There are many aspects to this, and there are many different ways of dealing with such difficult experiences. I am not an expert on this subject and fortunately I am not very experienced in it. Nevertheless, it seems important to me that suffering can be admitted to and given space. At such a time we need the support of others more than ever. We need people who listen to us and share our pain with us. Suffering, be it grief, pain or sorrow, cannot be removed here. But space can be created for it where it can be integrated into life or evaporate over time. I like the graphic idea that suffering can diffuse like a drop of ink in a vessel of water to the point where it is still present but barely visible.
We may be surprised, too, by the compensation effect known from empirical research into happiness, which is also known as hedonic adaptation. This refers to the fact that people can adapt relatively quickly to new circumstances and tend to return to their original level of happiness after positive or negative events. This effect can mean, for example, that even the fictitious lottery win mentioned above does not permanently increase the level of happiness. The compensation effect thus illustrates people’s ability to adapt to changing life circumstances, and the levelling out of extreme states of happiness over time to arrive at a stable sense of well-being. This has both its advantages and disadvantages, but it can lend us some confidence, especially with regard to setbacks that may lie ahead. The theory of post-traumatic growth goes one step further. Post-traumatic growth describes the possibility that after stressful experiences people not only experience psychological and social recovery, but also personal growth. It emphasises in particular the potential increase in strength, a heightened appreciation of life, more intense personal relationships and a new understanding of one’s own abilities. This theory, which reminds me very much of supercompensation in sport, underlines the fact that not only can we return to a certain level of happiness after traumatic experiences, but we can also establish positive changes that increase our individual well-being in the long term.
But with all these uplifting theories, I don’t want to gloss over the fact that a blow of fate can be so severe that people are brought to their knees for a long time and their pain doesn’t ‘diffuse’ so quickly and it hardly seems possible for them to pick themselves up again. We all carry our imaginary ‘rucksack’, some are bigger and heavier, others are smaller and lighter. Many carry a burden with them that they could cast down, while other burdens weigh more heavily — for a lifetime.