What You Learn Being Still

I happened to be unfortunate enough to rupture my Achilles tendon. I can confidently say it has been the single most humbling experience of my life. I have never felt more incapable of existing than I did when I could not walk.

For me, moving independently is synonymous with being alive. Stillness feels like death, or perhaps something worse: degradation. As time has passed, I’ve learned to manage those feelings of despair through exercising (what parts i can), reading, and thinking more intensely than I ever had before. In doing so, I decided to put together a list of things I’ve learned throughout this process.

People Are Kind; But Also Uncomfortable Around Disabled People

I’m not much of a talker, and I generally avoid unnecessary eye contact unless I need to get a point across (or get a waiter’s attention). So it became quite the predicament when I suddenly found so many eyes wanting to catch mine.

Strangers would walk over to ask how the accident happened, tell me to “hang in there,” or simply offer encouragement through a smile or small gesture. Whenever this happened while I was out with my wife, she’d ask, “Who was that?” and I’d say "another fan".

I’ve never been pregnant, but I sometimes wonder if this is what it feels like to walk around with a visible baby bump — the strange public visibility of carrying something that immediately changes how people perceive and approach you.

On the other hand, there are people who seem to lose their composure around visible injury. They struggle to make space, hesitate awkwardly before asking if you need help, or silently stumble out of the way as if disability itself is contagious.

Still, I’ve come away from this experience feeling strangely hopeful. There is far more kindness in the world than we often allow ourselves to believe. Even amid hardship, conflict, and the endless stream of terrible news, many people still instinctively reach toward compassion when confronted with another person’s suffering.

You Find Other Ways to Do the Things That Matter Most

No one really tells you how difficult simple things become when you lose access to one leg — let alone two. Life instantly becomes X 2 as hard.

In the early days after my injury, I couldn’t carry a cup of water across a room without spilling it. Sitting on the toilet became an operation. Standing for more than five minutes while balancing my full weight on one leg felt mythological, like Atlas holding up the sky. Crutches rubbed my skin raw in places I didn’t know could hurt.

Yet over time, Nothing objectively became easier, but everything became more manageable. Eventually, i became a kind of crutch savant, wielding them like extra limbs. Sometimes I’d hoist myself off my feet with just my crutch, balancing my entre body mid -air, showing off to my wife a little. I learned how to hop efficiently on my good leg while tending to my freshly growing bok choy and lettuce i'd planted in week 2 of my injury. You learn very quickly how to fall safely.

At times, I also wonder if this is what reincarnation into a baby’s body would feel like, slowly relearning movement, balance, and independence from scratch.

Time Slows Down — But Only for You

One of the strangest parts of injury is realizing that the world does not slow down with you.

Your life suddenly becomes measured in small movements and calculated effort, while everyone else continues moving at full speed. A trip to the kitchen becomes a logistical exercise. Stairs become architecture designed by a sadist. Entire afternoons disappear between resting, elevating, icing, and attempting basic tasks.

Meanwhile, emails still arrive. Family and friends still make plans. Deliveries still show up. Slack continues pulsing with urgency while you remain suspended in stillness.

There is an uncomfortable intimacy that comes with being still long enough to confront yourself without interruption. As i move through the phases of recovery and regaining mobility, some parts of me wants to remember all of these moments and the moments of slowness i've learnt to live with.

I'm reminded of Natsume Sōseki's, The Miner:

In the stillness, my consciousness became highly attenuated, that's all. But even this attenuated consciousness was one part real world in ten parts water. As diluted as I became, it never quite disappeared”