Mind how you go, no matter how painful
Which is more cruel - to have the use of your body but lose your mind, or the other way around?
I asked myself this question more than a year ago while attending the opening of an exhibition showcasing the achievements of Charles Kao Kuen, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist often called the father of fibre optics. By that time, Kao was at an advance stage of Alzheimer's disease and could not recognise his devoted wife, Gwen Kao Wong May-wan. A terrible disease like Alzheimer's robs you of your memories, the 'stuff' that makes you who you are.
At the event was a special guest, Lau Hiu-fung, a young man who had suffered from Duchenne muscular dystrophy since the age of eight. Mathematically gifted, he graduated in 2009 from Polytechnic University with first-class honours in computer science. For that reason, he has been called Hong Kong's 'Stephen Hawking'.
Sadly, this indomitable young man died last week from heart failure, aged 27. At the time of his death, he was developing SMS technology for air travellers and computer keyboards that can respond to brainwaves for the severely disabled. Up to the very end, he refused to take morphine in order to keep his mind lucid and to communicate with close friends and loved ones. Our hearts go out to them.
What keeps men like Lau, Hawking and Tony Judt - the distinguished British historian who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and died in 2010 - going? Others in a similar state would surely falter and lose hope. Judt kept delivering lectures and dictating to his wife and another friend material for a book and articles until the end.
What is common about these men, it seems, is the 'existential' projects - whether they be computer engineering, cosmology or European history - to which they could devote their whole being and intellect. Such commitments are what gives their lives meaning and sustains them through their suffering.
So, to answer my own question, I venture to say it's better to keep your mind with a disabled body - because you can still stay defiant in the face of cruel fate and not lose your very selfhood.
