The Amputee's Dilemma and the Disabled' Resolve

Following is an exerpt from REAL, by the genius Inoue Takehiko;


I've always got these thoughts racing through my head... "Why did this happen" "Did I do something wrong""How could I have avoided this?""What could have happened to keep them from cutting off my legs?""Was it the doctor's fault?" "The doctor who said it was overwork!" "Couldn't I have prevented it?" Was it fate? If it was all preordained, then the time I spent in my life... All the feeling I poured into running... Was it meaningless?
Aren't you afraid, Yamaguchi-kun? You know you're going to die in a few years... How can you be so strong and brave?

... Have you ever been on a roller-coaster? You're only riding it for a few minutes, right? If you spent the entire ride thinking "only a few minutes" "only so many seconds left until this ride is over..." then what was the point of riding it in the first place?
Nobody knows why we're alive. We don't have the time to bother.
www.onemanga.com/real/22/16

The other cool part of this volume of the manga is chapter 24. Kogawa meets a tatoo artist/wheekchair basketball player with the same rotation plasty surgery as he does, and that man lets him see the path to self acceptance, which is a huge milestone for a person who became disabled. I realize that I play the father's part in my story... But for Kogawa, there is the final step, the most beautiful moment in a while, and it comes on these two pages:
http://www.onemanga.com/Real/24/28/
http://www.onemanga.com/Real/24/29/

... I think I understand my brother a bit more now... but his problem was from before he remembers... he's never walked normally, so he has no memories to miss, nothing to compare to. If it was preordained that he would be handicapped to his feet and hand, then I can only be thankful that he grew up as the handicap developped. That way, I think, is less painful for him who can't use a wheelchair properly, or not as well, since he only has one good hand.

But that too might be foolishness on my part. Perhaps, if he had wanted it badly enough, he would have been able to learn. It's his fault he didn't I know, but I can't help but wonder about my own role in all of this. In retrospect, none of us ever had much faith in him, did we?

...

I always thought the disabled didn't fight. It was convenient for me to think that.
http://www.onemanga.com/Real/38/10/