Summary Of Learning To Fall By Phillip Simmons

Learning How to Live

Do you know how it feels to live when you are unable to do things which make you happy? Diseases set a parameter to the way you live. Lou Gehrig’s disease is a neurological disorder with no cure, and death is the outcome. In the short story “Learning To Fall,” the author Philip Simmons, who is suffering with Lou Gehrig’s disease leads his life with his beliefs and strengths; he is an inspiration to those who have lost hope in their life.

Phillip Simmons compares life as a mystery. He believes that hardship prepares a person for life. He thinks that losing something will help us gain our “birth right” (Simmons 1242). The author uses himself as an example of coping with the hardest time of his life. As a patient suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, Phillip Simmons faces difficulty in doing simple things, such as going down the stairs or typing on a computer. However, the author is a brave man which did not stop him from giving up writing.

He went there with his friends and family, during the climb a rain storm struck them, but nothing could stop him from summiting the mountain. After facing so much trouble on the mountain, Philip Simmons did not let his disease and the storm defeat him. As the author says, “It was as though I had been privileged with a glimpse of my own death, and found it the most terrible and beautiful thing I had ever seen “(Simmons 1243). When he was young, the author was afraid of going down the stairs without his mother, and Simmons made a brave decision when he had to do it on his own. From his childhood, the author is very brave, and this reminds me of my