Dignity in Disease
I was born in 1983. Back then, Muhammad Ali had already quit his career as a professional boxer and Parkinson's syndrome had taken over his life. This untreatable nervous disorder severely slows one's movements and slurs one's speech. In 1998, my dad raised my interest in Ali by purchasing a videotape with two Ali fights. They could not have been more different from one another. The first one is shot in black and white and shows the young Ali - then still Cassius Clay - winning merely with his reflexes and lightning-fast combinations. The second encounter on the videotape took place ten years later, in 1974. This was the bout where Muhammad Ali misled the whole world. For eight rounds he was leaning back against the ropes, taking blow after blow from George Foreman, the colossal muscle-man he faced. It is hard, almost impossible, to try and think of the amount of pain Ali had to endure during that hot night in Africa. Yet his face signaled that nothing in the world could hurt him. In the end, suffering prevailed over brutality, and after more than half an hour of being beaten on literally every part of the body, Ali knocked out the startled Foreman. |
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The next day, I was driving home and thought about the incredible event I had witnessed. Once again, Ali had misled everyone by pretending everything was alright when indeed he was a very sick man. Had the man not every right in the world to show his sufferings and receive the people's pity? Instead, he chose not to let Parkinson's steal his life and people's happiness. He chose to shut up the disease within his body, as if to prevent people from even knowing about it. How much strength must one have to deal with a sickness that fierce and severe with such dignity and pride? I promised myself that, if I would ever be seriously ill, to try and deal with it the same way. At the same moment, I knew that I would not have the strength. |
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Johannes Ehrmann |