The Yellow World (6 page)

We’re all special. I know it sounds like a cliché, but we are. We never liked hearing the words
disabled
or
invalid
in the hospital. They’re two words to get rid of; lack of physical function doesn’t have anything to do with them.

Over the years I have worked with mentally handicapped people, and here’s another phrase to get rid of. These are people who tend to be the most special of all and the ones I respect the most; they’re sensitive, innocent, and simple. And I use these words in their most positive sense. They’re special.

I’m missing a leg and a lung, although I’ve always thought that in fact I had an artificial leg and a single lung. Missing, possessing—it all depends on how you look at it. In my own
way I am special. I like to think that I’m marked out in some way and that this makes me different.

But it’s not just the lack of physical or mental elements that makes someone special. Like I said earlier, we’re all special. All you have to do is validate what it is that makes you special.

There was an orderly in the hospital who said: “Tell me a secret and I’ll tell you why you’re so special.” While we were in the recovery rooms he told us about special people and the secrets that we all have. He thought that secrets are necessary in life, that they are private treasures only available to each of us individually. Because no one knows them, there’s no key to get to them, and they mark us internally because we never share them.

Above all he told us of the importance of sharing our secrets. He said it was like showing other people what makes us special, what makes us different, and that’s always the most difficult thing to talk about.

While he explained these things to us I looked at him closely. I wanted to know what this dark-skinned man was thinking, with his round eyes and prominent eyebrows. I wanted to know why he was special, what the secrets were that made him different.

I never knew what they were, but he taught us something vital: The things that we had—false legs, scars, bruises, bald heads—these were things that made us different and made us feel special, which is why we should never hide them but show them with pride.

He achieved his aim: I’ve never been ashamed to show off the things I lack. And I’ve been able to make secrets, the
things that are the most difficult for us to share, nothing more than a proof of our differences.

When I left the hospital I didn’t forget these lessons. Whenever I’ve had a secret I’ve asked myself if having it is a good idea and I’ve decided when to reveal it, when to allow it to transform me into someone special. What you hide is what says the most about you.

The formula is …

It’s possible that while I was in the hospital they gave me a thousand injections, no kidding. I’ve got cysts, dry veins, hidden veins. I love it when a vein decides to sink down into the body’s catacombs, far away from the skin, far away from the needles. How intelligent veins are.

I always breathed out when they gave me an injection, as much when I stopped feeling pain as when I felt it. Breathing out, like blowing out a candle, always makes things better. I like to think there’s something magical in it.

I remember that Antonio’s mother—Antonio was a funny little Egghead who always made me laugh—told us that we should blow out air and make a wish. She told us that people
only do this when it’s their birthday because they think that there’s something powerful about the day itself, but they don’t know that it’s the blowing out that’s the most important thing. I loved Antonio’s mother; she always told us great stories full of examples. Among many other things, she told us about the power of blowing on things.

She told us about mothers who blew on their children’s injuries when they fell off their bicycles, about grazes that were cured with nothing more than blowing and a little bit of hydrogen peroxide. Blowing on things as a superpower.

I believed this without question. Every time they gave me an injection I made a wish; I never forgot to do this. I blew out, made a wish, and noticed the injection. I smiled automatically. What luck it was to be able to make so many wishes. I felt privileged. Also, I should add, lots of them have been fulfilled.

And now in my normal life I haven’t stopped blowing. I blow and make a wish two or three times a week, without any obvious cause, whenever I need to. As Antonio’s mother said, all these wishes, all this blowing accumulates inside us and we have to let it out, we have to extract these desires.

So don’t be frightened, and blow at least once a week, whenever you need to make a wish.

Sometimes I think that so many of my wishes have come true because of blowing so much in the hospital.

I think that, without knowing, the body has given us a weapon against bad luck; the problem is that the day-to-day nature of this superpower stops us from noticing it.

Remember:

I’m sure that the people who live to be a hundred have blown out like this a lot. This exchange of air, breathing in and out, is what has given them such long lives.

Antonio died blowing out. I don’t know what he was wishing for, but his mother told me that she was sure his wish had been granted. I believe so, too. Put your lips together and blow. Make another wish.…

My doctor always told me that he wanted the best for me, but sometimes what seemed the best ended up not being the best. It’s difficult to know how a human body will react to a drug, or a therapy or an operation. But he asked me to trust him, and he emphasized this: “I’ve always believed,” he said, “that if my ‘past me’ took this decision, it was because he believed in it. [Your ‘past you’ is you a few years, months, or days ago.] Respect your past you.”

This was a great piece of advice. Maybe at that exact moment I didn’t think of it in that way. I was about to have an
operation and I really hoped that his “present him” wasn’t going to make a mistake.

After I left the hospital I reflected on these words. It was a great discovery, not just for medical purposes but for everything. We tend to think that we make the wrong decisions; it’s as if we think that we’re cleverer now than we used to be, as if our past selves hadn’t balanced all the pros and cons of the decisions we made.

Ever since that doctor told me about his past self, I’ve always believed in my past me. I even think he’s cleverer than my future me. So when I sometimes make a wrong decision I don’t get annoyed; I remember that I made the decision myself and that it was considered and thought through (one thing is true, I always try to think through and consider my decisions).

You mustn’t be upset by the wrong decisions you make. You have to trust your past you. Of course your fifteen-year-old you could have made a mistake not taking that class, or your twenty-three-year-old you shouldn’t have gone on that trip, or your twenty-seven-year-old you shouldn’t have taken that job. But it was you who made those decisions and you must have dedicated some time to making them. Why do you think that you’ve now got the right to judge what he, your past you, decided to do? Accept who you are; don’t be afraid of being the person that your decisions have made you into.

Bad decisions crystallize; bad decisions, after a while, turn into good decisions. Accept this and you will be happy in your life and, above all, happy with yourself.

My doctor made three or four mistakes. I never threw
these decisions in his face because I didn’t think that his mistakes came from a lack of experience or professionalism. In order to make mistakes, one has to take risks; the result is the least important part of the process.

I am sure that if we got your eight-year-old you, your fifteen-year-old you, and your thirty-year-old you together in a room, they would have different ideas about almost everything and they would be able to justify every decision they’d made. I love trusting my past me; I love living with the results of the decisions he made.

I have a huge scar over where my liver is from surgery. The operation wasn’t any use in the end because there was nothing wrong with my liver, but my doctor had thought I had cancer and that if I wasn’t operated on then I would die. This scar makes me feel very proud, makes me feel a lot of different feelings whenever I see it. Everything that provokes a surge of emotions is positive, extremely positive.

So:

Like that doctor told me:
Acknowledgment
is the key word. You have to acknowledge yourself, acknowledge how you became what you are, and acknowledge whose fault it is.

They taught us in the hospital to accept that we can make mistakes. My doctor sometimes made mistakes and always accepted the blame. The world would run more smoothly if we all accepted that we make mistakes, that we have made mistakes, that we’re not perfect. Lots of people try to find excuses for their mistakes, look for someone else to blame, shift liability for deaths onto other people; they never know the joy of accepting responsibility. There is joy in the knowledge that you have made a wrong decision and that you acknowledge it.

I would love to see more trials where people admit their guilt, or drivers stopped for breaking the speed limit admit that they were going too fast.

We have to acknowledge that we make mistakes in order to see where the mistakes are and not make them anymore. Maybe lots of people are afraid of the punishment that will follow from this admission, but the punishment is the least important bit; the only important thing is to give your brain the correct information.

There was a five-year-old kid who they brought into the hospital with cancer of the tibia. Sometimes he came with us to “the sun.” “The sun” was a place that they’d set up next to the parking lot; it always caught the sun and there was a basketball hoop.

It wasn’t easy to get permission to go to the sun. You had to behave very well. They normally let us be in the sun between five and seven. I loved going out of the hospital to go to the sun. It made me feel great, like going on a trip to New York: The contrast was huge. We stayed out for those two hours taking the sun; we got tanned.

Sometimes the little guy came with us. But he didn’t lie
down to take the sun like the rest of us. He stayed standing up, staring at the parking cars. If people parked well, he went crazy; his eyes got as big as saucers; he smiled and laughed and clapped like mad. If they took a long time parking or had to flail around a lot, he went crazy the other way; he got angry and almost ended up kicking the car.

I don’t know where this passion for cars came from, but as time went on we stopped tanning ourselves and just stared at him. He was worth watching. He was passionate, intelligent, observant; he was a mystery to us.

I think that he didn’t look just at cars; he looked at movement, looked at time, turns, elegance. This is what made him crazy: shapes, the energy in the turns, the sweetness of a perfect piece of parking.

A few months later they detected that the cancer had metastasized in both his lungs. That day we went down to the sun together. He didn’t have permission but we managed to smuggle him out with a false permission slip that another patient had left.

I knew that he liked looking at the cars. We spent almost two hours there in the sun, watching them park. When we were heading back to the hospital I asked him: “Why do you like looking at cars so much, Marc?” He looked at me and asked: “Why do you all like looking at the sun so much?” I said that it wasn’t so much that we looked at the sun but that the sun gave us … it was nice … that … The truth is I didn’t know why we looked at the sun.

Not to judge: That’s the important lesson that kid taught me that day. He looked at cars and I looked at the sun. I kept quiet and he went crazy about what he saw. I’m sure that his
cars gave him as much as the sun gave me: color, health, happiness. I imagine that watching people park cars gives you some sort of pleasure as well. The important thing isn’t what you look at, but what you get out of looking.