Nancy Mairs.

A detailed Summary of Nancy Mairs.

Nancy Mairs, who has multiple sclerosis, a chronic degenerative disease of the central nervous system, wrote the inspiring essay "On Being a Cripple," in which she demonstrates how she gracefully accepts and lives with her disease, how she deals with the difficulties that follow, and how she finds humors in life though she suffers from the brutal fact of her malady. In the article, she fully displays her gratitude for life despite the unpredictable future she must face daily as the result of MS. Also, she shows her sense of humor toward life while dealing with the harsh of the reality

One of the major reasons that Nancy leads such a productive life is her gratitude. Nancy's gratitude toward the world enables her to achieve the kind of fruitful life which most of us, even without a physical disease, could have not achieved. Though living with the disease, she manages to focus on making the best out of her life. She has accomplished many things. She has pursued and received her education, educate the society about MS and depression by offering lectures in colleges to, and remain active and optimistic in the society, maintaining a close, warm, and healthy family relationship. None of those are easy to achie

ve, but because of her gratitude, she did it. Despite of the daily difficulties she has to deal with, she finds many reasons to live her life contently and happily. Although the slowly progressing MS disease has caused her many physical disadvantages: leaving her walking with the aid of brace and cane, using a electric wheelchair, which she describes as an "electrified kiddie car" for longer distance, left hand no longer much of use and right side also started to weakening, and still having blurred sport on her eyes, yet she still claims that overall, her life has been lucky so far. She said, "My world has, of necessity, been circumscribed by my losses, but the terrain left has been ample enough for me to continue many of the activities that absorbs me." She is thankful that the disease has not taken everything away from her and that she still can write, teach, raise kids and pets and plants, read and speak to the public about the MS and depression. From above, she shows that she is grateful with what she has left and what she still capable of doing instead of lamenting what she has lost and what she can no longer do. Furthermore, she thinks that, overall, she has been lucky and has been leading a quite normal life because of even before she has the disease, she was the type of person who prefers to sit and read, rather engaging physical activities; therefore she thinks is lucky since the disease did not cause her to give up actives she enjoys, rather, she is able to do the things she enjoys. This is an attitude of gratitude for life. No matter what she has, she is grateful for it.

The other attribute that helps her to ease her life through hardship is her sense of humor. Nancy's philosophy of life is that if people lose their sense of humor

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Approximate Word count = 1183
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English