I honestly can’t imagine what it must be like to be Stephen Hawking. To have one of the greatest minds throughout the history of the world but at the same time be severely disabled by a degenerative disorder that renders one’s muscular functions relatively useless, seems impossible to deal with, but somehow he’s done it for over 50 years. After watching a portrayal of his life in The Theory Of Everything, I’ve gained profound respect and compassion for Hawking, not because he’s a genius, but because he’s never given up.
The Theory Of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and begins during Hawking’s latter college years at Cambridge when his health started to rapidly deteriorate. By the age of 21, after repeated bouts of spontaneous clumsiness and slurred speech, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and given 2 years left to live. Redmayne does such an incredibly realistic job portraying what Hawking faced from this point forward in life that I found myself actually believing I was watching Hawking himself go through his terrible ordeal. But even through the depression he initially battled, as well as the incredible suffering and debilitation he endured, Hawking found true love in Jane Wilde, who’s played by Felicity Jones in the film. It becomes quite obvious to the viewer that Jane’s love of Stephen becomes one of the greatest positive forces to preventing him from ever giving up. As the rest of the movie goes on to painfully show Hawking become the deformed wheelchair figure he is today using that computerized voice to speak, I was clearly reminded how there’s always someone out there worse off than me. But regardless of his life’s tragic circumstances, Hawking has defied his doctor’s odds many times over. And not only did he find true love (twice), he also went on to parent three children, gain his doctorate, and garner many awards, honors, and achievements for his work in theoretical physics and cosmology.
But what I found most interesting from the movie and the research I did on Hawking afterwards is my discovery that he’s a proclaimed atheist. While I’m sure Hawking would say that the two loves of his life were guiding forces for many of those times when he wanted to give up, I’m inclined to believe that he has more spiritual beliefs than he realizes. The power of love is something I tend to think comes from something greater than all of us and not something we can just create. After all, if we were able to just create it whenever we wanted, we’d probably be falling in love a lot more often in life. Regardless, Hawking received this precious gift twice in life where each would keep him going when he most needed it. Whether he ever chooses to acknowledge the possibility that his true loves may have come from a Higher Presence or not I don’t know. Either way, Hawking is unquestionably one of the greatest minds that have ever lived. But more importantly, The Theory Of Everything cleared showed how his ability to transcend his unfortunate life circumstances and never given up is something that can be a spiritual inspiration for many, like it undoubtedly has been for me.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson