A Symbol of Hope

Today, one of my regular students transferred with his family to a new apartment because their family’s having a financial crisis. It’s a nice looking place but smaller than the previous one (according to him). I saw at his back something colorful hanging on the wall of his bedroom so I asked him what it is. 

/photo from Google Images

He said, it’s a crane origami. Japanese have the belief that if somebody close to you is ill, creating a thousand crane origami can grant your wish of making that person recover from it. I asked him if he has a sick friend. He answered, “No, it’s me.”

I was surprised. 

He told me that last May, he had an operation on his right brain. He had a brain tumor. His parents didn’t notice that he’s suffering from a serious illness because he also had epilepsy since he was young so they thought all the symptoms were just because of it. One time, he had a serious attack which caused him to be brought in the hospital and there they found out about it.

The doctor said that if he’ll remove the tumor through operation, there’s a 70% chance of him being half paralyzed (his left body). His family decided to continue with the operation to save his life.

At the day of his operation, his friends, family members and girlfriend, spent their time outside the operating room, folding pieces of paper to complete the thousand origami.

They already finished 1,000 but they still continued and said they won’t stop until the operation was done. They finished a total of 1,063.

He is well now, the operation succeeded and he’s not paralyzed.

That’s the most inspiring 25min lesson that I had.

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3. ahkina said: that’s beautiful… I remember trying to make one of those when i was younger (japanese-american) and it really takes dedication.
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