Reflections on Christina Lau

Today, we had the pleasure of experiencing Christina Lau’s talk. Here are some brief reflections and takeaways:

When asked whether she would choose to go back in time and prevent her accident from happening, she did not give a direct yes or no answer. This was quite interesting to me – after all, it seems obvious that one would wish to prevent their accident. However, it seems that she was unwilling to do so, simply because of how much of her life has been shaped by the accident – her mouth painting, her participation in the paralympics etc. It seems that for people in unusual circumstances, an optimistic embracing of their challenges is the best way to move forward. I would be interested to see whether this trend occurs in other people in similar situations and whether we could apply this to our own lives – to embrace challenge and difficulty as part of us as a means of dealing with it.

One of my interests throughout these talks have been about the support structures around people in hardship. In Christina’s case, she talked about the encouragement of her love ones during her time of hardship. She discussed both the physical and mental support they provided. Looking back now, I would have been interested to know more details of how they dealt with it – from what she said, they too were quite shocked with the entire issue and the ability to support someone through it after such a surprise should not be dismissed. I wonder how people can deal with shock when trying to support others through tough times – whether we can channel that empathy towards helping them as opposed to simply falling into a depression on the issue.

Another interesting aspect of her life story is of her moving into mouth painting. She had never been an artsy person before the accident, yet circumstances forced her towards joining the mouth painting association. These types of drastic changes to people’s lives can often lead to the discovery of new talents. I think it is important for us to put ourselves to changes and be willing to explore, as often we can uncover hidden aspects of ourselves, and her life story is an important example of this. At the same time, one need not wholly discard their old identity – after all, she still participates in sports, just adapting to it in a new way by trying wheelchair table tennis.

Overall, Christina Lau had an encouraging story to share to wrap up a fortnight of brilliant speakers.