Have you ever seen how a successful person ruined his life? How was it?
I knew a young man who was having the time of his life. And then only minutes later he made the mistake of his life. And all was lost.
He must have been about twenty years old, and was a talented painter, ready to conquer the world.
One night, on an evening out with his friends, he decided he had to pee.
But instead of taking the stairs down to the basement where the restrooms were, he wanted to impress his friends and so he slid off the railing of the stairway.
Well, at least that was the idea.
Because in the middle of the stairway — and this was a long and high stairway — he stumbled over the railing and crashed onto the marble floor, about 15 feet below.
Although everyone was laughing at first, expecting him to stand up and make a joke about it, something appeared to be wrong.
He felt really sick, and claimed he could not move his legs.
Nor his arms and hands.
Nobody was laughing anymore at that point.
In the hospital, the verdict was extremely harsh: a complete cervical spinal cord injury, paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his young life.
That happened more than twenty years ago.
And he has never walked since.
SOURCES: Google images. The same man (Sam Ballard) is featured in both of them. On the left-hand side, paralyzed for life after eating a slug (to impress his friends) and contracting rat lungworm disease.