Do you know what significance 3.21 holds? Until Hope arrived in our lives, nor did we. You see, 3.21 is the International Down Syndrome Day. The date is significant because people like Hope were made with an extra 21st chromosome. Amazingly, that's it. Just one extra chromosome and yet in so many ways people like Hope are so extraordinarily different to the rest of us.
Before Hope I probably wouldn't have ever bothered to find out more about Down syndrome or what it means. Before Hope I probably would never have given a Down syndrome person a second thought. Before Hope my perspective on life was pretty simplified and linear. Before Hope I was an ignorant fool.
Hope has opened up my eyes to a world that's existed since the dawn of man but most of us don't even pause to acknowledge even exists. For me, before Hope, Down syndrome was a passing 'thing' that was more a quirk of nature than a part of humanity. Now that Hope is here, Down syndrome has become a hard-and-fast fact of life - I notice people and circumstances I'd never really considered before. I connect with people on a spiritual level that the old Bryan could never understand.
Unless we open our eyes and try to understand the 'other side' of life that happens around us we'll remain deprived of a deeper understanding of life.
Don't discard people with Down syndrome just because they seem slow or different - in many ways they're actually a lot more like us than we realise and besides, even if they were different, they didn't choose to be made with an extra chromosome so why should we ever have the right to choose whether they live or die before they're even born because 'life is better for them' not being born?
Hope has shown me how much just one extra chromosome can mean to a person's life, and in almost every case I've come across, that extra chromosome makes them just that little bit better than the rest of us where it really counts...
