My friend Tom is the most optimistic person I’ve ever met. Recently he wrote a short reflection about how his experience as a wheelchair user has changed over time. His words are a powerful reminder that sometimes the way we look at our situation matters as much as the situation itself.
His essay made me stop and think, and I wanted to share it with you.
Prison or Freedom?
By Tom Morris
As a wheelchair user, it’s not uncommon for someone to look at the chair and immediately see limitation. As funny as it sounds, sometimes they speak slower. Sometimes louder.
Sometimes they simply say, “I’ll pray for you.”
And I understand why, I get it.
The wheelchair is the universal symbol for disability. When people see it, they assume loss. They assume confinement. If I’m honest, before my injury, I would’ve assumed the same thing.
Movement was my identity. My career, my hobbies, my sense of freedom, all built on being physically capable. If you had told 31-year-old me that at 32 I’d be in a wheelchair, I would’ve quietly thought:
Checkmate.
Game over.
Then it happened.
At first, it did feel like a prison. Not just physically, mentally. Because the mind decides what something means before experience has a chance to speak.
But here’s what time and perspective taught me:
The wheelchair didn’t change. The meaning did.
The same piece of metal I once would’ve labeled a sentence is now the tool that gives me independence. It gets me to work. It gets me on planes. It gets me into rooms where I can lead, teach, and serve. What I thought would trap me is the very thing that allows me to move forward.
So is the wheelchair a prison?
Or is it freedom?
The object never changed. Only the lens did.
We all have something in our lives that feels like confinement, a setback, a diagnosis, a failure, a situation we didn’t choose. The circumstance is real.
But whether it becomes a cage or a vehicle?
That’s perspective.
The question is: Is your mindset building bars… or building doors?
Sometimes freedom isn’t found in changing the situation.
It’s found in changing what we believe the situation means.
Tom’s words made me think about the things in my own life that once felt like limitations. I hope this essay does the same for you.
