In August 1921, Franklin Roosevelt spent a perfect day at Campobello Island with his family.
He went sailing. There was a forest fire nearby — he and the boys jogged two miles to help put it out. They came back to the island, went for a swim in the cold freshwater lake. Another swim in the Bay of Fundy. He felt tired that evening — but good tired. The right kind.
He went to bed.
The next morning he woke up and his left leg felt weak. By the next day, his legs wouldn't hold him. Within 48 hours, paralysis had spread through his legs, his back, his thumbs, his toes. He was 39 years old.
He never walked unassisted again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin writes that Roosevelt could not have known, jogging toward that fire, swimming in that lake, that it was the last time his body would feel fully his. No one announced it. No door closed. He just woke up the next day in a different life.
He went on to serve twelve years as president. Led America through the Great Depression. Led the Allies through World War II. From a wheelchair.
You don't get to know which ordinary day is the last one. The forest fire, the lake, the good tired feeling — all of it just happened to be the last.
That's not a reason to be afraid. It's a reason to take the swim.
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