At school, science for me consisted of going to classes and playing with bunsen burners and chemicals and generally not paying much attention. I'm not a sciency maths person... I'm an English, art, PE person. Anyway, when I saw this I had to go. The story of a man who talks through a computer. That's pretty much all I knew about him.
The film started and we were shown the life of Professor Hawking. Afterwards a satellite Q&A hosted by that annoying dude who hosts edgy documentaries and used to do the news.
He annoyed me as when Mary Hawking was up to talk, he'd ask her questions and without giving her time to answer would interrupt and carry on talking. We're not here to listen to you host man...
Then the ultimate fail... Stephen Hawkings turn to be on stage came and it was like they didn't know he was coming. He was sat about 2 feet left from the host the entire time, but he was asked to go around the stage to the other side and they struggled for about 10 minutes trying to squeeze Stephen along the front and onto the stage. At which point I tweeted the host saying "can you not just turn your chair around and go to Stephen?!!" He sat and watched all this going on like a helpless character. It was an embarrassing scene.
Anyway, my thoughts have been immersed by what I saw last night. I am totally amazed at the strength and character of this 71 year old man, who was told he had 2 years to live at the age of 20.
He is a true inspiration. His voice is heard by him moving a muscle in his cheek to select letters and words on the screen which is then read out by the computer. He does this at a rate of 1 word every 3 seconds. Can you imagine having to do that? It takes me 3 seconds to think of a word sometimes!
He has achieved so much in his life so far, despite having an awful illness. If I were in his shoes, I feel I would have given up. Having this enormous brain trapped in a slowly deteriorating body to the point now where only a few muscles remain working.
It makes me ashamed of how i have acted sometimes. I have been in a place before where I didn't know how to carry on with life anymore. Compared to this amazing man, I'm ashamed to have even had those thoughts. He has inspired me to find determination and overcome anything.
Not only is Professor Hawking an intelligent man who discovered the black hole theory and lots of other universy things that are way beyond my brain capacity, his humour and wittiness shows through and his personality can be seen through his eyes and expression. It saddens me that such a man has had to suffer this disability, but his attitude is inspiring.
I hope he lives a long time and continues to inspire other people and I hope things can be developed in order to make his life easier. I also hope he fulfils his dream of getting to space.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet"
Stephen Hawking
