Learning to live again: Brooke Hopkins struggles through rehab after bicycling accident - Salt Lake

"One night a Tibetan Buddhist monk in maroon-and-saffron robes swept into
His wife, Peggy Battin, comforts Hopkins after a particularly grueling day of off-the-vent breathing and therapy. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Hopkins' Bountiful rehab room and delivered a piece of ancient wisdom. The body is nothing; it is ephemeral,' the lama told him. 'The mind is everything.'

Hopkins remembered that sentiment when he saw, for the first time, his emaciated body in the mirror while being wheeled into the shower. He either could be depressed by the sight or celebrate his expanding mental powers and social skills, either indulge in self-pity or confront the challenges ahead with dignity and drive.

'The lama's words came back with their full force,' he recalls, 'and I understood them for the first time ... and my potential depression lifted.' Article
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