Some people in the spinal cord injury community are fundamentally opposed to spending research dollars on rehabilitation research. This position is based on the notion that the cure for spinal cord injury is really close, if we’d just commit sufficient resources to cure-oriented research. In this view, supporting rehabilitation research is counterproductive, because it takes away money that could be more productively used in finding the cure.

This position is not based on reality. A critical reading of the latest research literature on healing the injured spinal cord shows that, although it holds promise, huge problems remain, and it will be many years before these problems are solved. Working toward a cure for spinal cord injury remains important, but not to the exclusion of research on innovative approaches to rehabilitation, including FES, assistive devices, and maximizing the functions of the respiratory system, bowel, bladder, and skin.

Is it reasonable to hope for a cure of your own spinal cord injury? Of course. Hope is an essential aspect of human psychological function. Without it, we’d have little ability to tolerate adverse events. Hope, however, can have beneficial or harmful effects, depending on how it is expressed and experienced. Certainly, a person with paraplegia should believe that a cure will be found someday, perhaps within his or her lifetime. This belief can be motivating and energizing. But some people try to deny the reality of their injury by focusing exclusively on the chance for a cure. If you expect a cure in the immediate future and wait for it – meanwhile, passing up opportunities to live more effectively with a disability – you may be doing yourself a great disservice.

Refusing to participate in medical treatment, therapy, and self-care activities that are necessary for effective rehabilitation, and ultimately for participating in the world of family, social life, and involvement in the community, would be detrimental for anyone with a spinal cord injury. We must continue with the research to improve the rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injuries while, at the same time, looking for curative treatments. To do otherwise is a retreat into fantasy.

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You have to confront and acknowledge what you are now and what you don’t want to be before you can become what you want to be.

The nonphysical exercises you do at the end of each week are an imperative part of the process, an integral part of the diet.

Getting thin and staying thin take more than a diet. I cannot stress the nonphysical exercises strongly enough.

For the next five weeks, make a commitment to me and to yourself. Surrender—and just let go! One of the reasons my diet works so well is that you have nothing to think about except getting skinny. You relinquish the responsibility of making choices, eliminating the temptation to cheat. Don’t worry, nothing is leaving the planet—it will all still be here tomorrow. All the food you love, or think you love, will still be here whenever you want it.

Important: Any diet, including this one, should be supervised by a doctor. This regimen should not be followed by anyone who has diabetes, colitis, hypoglycemia, a spastic colon, ulcers, illeitis, enteritis, diverticulosis, or by anyone who is pregnant or breast feeding.

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The primary cause of the failure of marriage is that compatible persons do not have an opportunity to get together in the first place. Marriage has broken down or is breaking down because we are trying to make the social machinery by which engagements could be effected in village life function in an urbanized world, and are trying to make the conventions and mores of a patriarchal, proprietary marriage system work in an age when marriage is based on romantic love and the free will of the individual. This may be more clearly expressed by saying that modern society places upon every individual the responsibility of seeking someone of the opposite sex who fulfills his ideal, and then puts every conceivable obstacle in the way of his finding such a person.

The chief of these obstacles is found in the social conventions and mores which make it difficult for acquaintance to be established between the sexes. In urban life, where one may find himself “all alone in a crowd,” the range of acquaintances even within one’s own sex may be limited enough. Then add all the social barriers that prevent easy acquaintance between opposite sexes and you have the reason why some strangely incompatible specimens are found united in wedlock. The number of persons from among whom one is expected to select a mate for a whole lifetime is far less than the range of choice of friends within the same sex, who may come and go and are not considered so vital to happiness. And the effect of this is seen in the fact that friendships on the whole are more spontaneously successful than marriages. Of course, one may seek an easy explanation for this difference in the fact that friendship is a less complicated experience than marriage, which is true, but this does not account for the fact that even when the comparison is limited to the field of ordinary interests and temperament, apart from sex, friendships show a striking superiority to marriages.

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