The most inspiring people

　　In the summer of 1981, Donald Brown, a 36-year-old construction worker, had just had his first knee repair surgery and was lying in a hospital bed. At the time, he was facing the dissolution of his second marriage and was on the verge of financial ruin. Due to the unbearable pain, he was given five consecutive morphine injections. In a trance, a voice came to his ears: Where do you want to be in 5 years, and where will you be in 10 years? The next day he woke up and found a notebook right next to him with his own handwriting on it: Harvard Law School and Walking Across America.

　　The doctor poured cold water on him: you've only been in school for nine years and you're already tied to a wheelchair for the rest of your life; these are not ideals, but your morphine-infused fantasies. Yet more than a decade later, he has not only fulfilled two major fantasies and made headlines in major media 32 times, but has also been called the most inspirational person in America.

　　Recently, the Walkers Diary, which records Brown's journey, was published in English as Morphine Dreams, which not only gives everyone the opportunity to experience another kind of travel, but also a life of cleansing and sublimation, and the New York Times commented that it was the most inspirational trip ever.

　　With Obama is a classmate

　　Brown's life had too many upsets. 13 years old, his father committed suicide due to bipolar disorder. Brown joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 17 and was forced to retire within two months due to an accidental injury. He wanted to be a professional baseball player, but gave up his baseball dreams at the age of 20 after losing his eyesight due to diabetes. After his first marriage ended, he suffered from mild bipolar disorder, and in his 30s, he worked as a construction worker before suffering a serious knee injury in an accident that doctors ruled would make him "a wheelchair companion for life.

　　The successive blows almost made Brown lose his confidence in life, and he even committed suicide several times. But after that knee surgery, he was determined to change his destiny. With the help of neighbors, Brown enrolled in free classes at Worcester Hills Community College and, two years later, received a full scholarship to Amherst College with seven straight A's. "For the first time, I found that I would be fascinated by the thoughtful world and that learning allowed me to discover and confront my own shortcomings." Brown recalls.

　　In 1985, at age 40, Brown was accepted to Harvard Law School. Professor David Wilkins vividly remembers the first time he met Brown: "I was a nervous young faculty member walking up to the podium for the first time. When I looked up, there was a guy sitting in the last row whose suit and tie was older than I was." The professor soon realized that Brown was a different kind of student, one whose special quality has remained to this day: a passion for what he had agreed to do.

　　Brown's classmates were full of talent, including current U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle, as well as Dan Brown, who would become a famous author. During his junior year of college, Brown wrote an essay, "The Quest for Racial Harmony. In this paper, Brown predicted that fellow student Barack Obama would defeat Newt Gingrich for president of the United States in 2004. This prediction was not quite accurate: Obama's ascension to the presidency was in 2008, when his opponent was McCain.

　　A lawsuit that made banks hate him

　　In 1990, Brown opened a law firm. On the first day of business, John Storms, an 84-year-old black man, approached Brown with a suitcase, after four law firms had already rejected Storms. After studying the box of paperwork, Brown discovered that it was a fraud case and dug up a fraud ring that specialized in defrauding older minorities. Brown filed lawsuits against eight banks and several companies, and the lawsuits created a stir. In the end, he helped dozens of elderly minorities win their cases.

　　Just as Brown was ambitious to make a career in law, fate once again played tricks on him. Because of his many lawsuits exposing fraudulent loans, Brown encountered great difficulties in expanding his business, and banks hated him so much that they would not provide loans. In 1992, Brown's law license was revoked.

　　The year before that, his youngest son, Louis, was born. The child was born with no sensation in 3/4 of his brain, and doctors told Brown that Louis would only live a few days and recommended removing life-sustaining equipment. "His young body was filled with all kinds of tubes, and when I put my hand on his little hand, he suddenly smiled." Brown felt he couldn't give up, and he insisted on rehab for the child. A few years later, except for a slight limp in his walk, Louis was no different from a normal child.

　　It seemed that bad luck would never let Brown go. The child had just gotten better when, in the fall of 1996, Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer. "I knew that every day and every minute was precious, and I couldn't postpone my dream any longer."

　　Looking back at life on the walk

　　At 6 a.m. on July 4, 1997, Brown set out from Boston to fulfill his second dream - to walk across America. From Boston to Big Sur, he walked through 21 states and more than 1,000 cities and towns. 137 days of travel, he overcame illness, heat, mosquitoes, hurricanes and unbearable loneliness, walking an average of 66 miles a day.

　　Along the way, Brown saw countless beautiful sights. "The early morning birdsong of the mountains, the rivers reflecting the sunset, I felt great, walking had a magical healing effect on my immune system, and walking provided me with natural Prozac."

　　It was a special journey through life, with an itinerary that was all based around the special people in his life. In Portsmouth, lived the Nick Charles family, who had been his neighbors. While everyone else was laughing at the bad boy without a father, Nick was doubly devoted to Brown. When Brown tried to visit Nick, he passed away a year ago. San Francisco, on the other hand, is where Brown's grandmother was born and raised. In Big Sur, the huge trees reminded him of his father.

　　The trip was not only a dream for Brown, but it also gave him a greater sense of life. In Amish Town, Indiana, he saw that people there live simply and peacefully, rarely use electricity and always ride horses everywhere. In the town of Wallace, Iowa, an elderly man donated $20 for Brown, "I admire what you're doing, and I've always wanted to hike across America, but I've been too busy raising a family." And now, I'm too old again. When the two shook hands to say goodbye, the old man hesitated to let go, saying, "Ugh, how I'd love to walk with you."

　　Brown has since walked across the United States twice more, in 2001 and 2006, and in 2007 he began writing about these unforgettable experiences.

　　A construction worker who didn't even graduate from high school became a classmate of Barack Obama; he was determined by doctors to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, but he walked across the United States three times; he was born unlucky, but became the most inspirational "Forrest Gump" in the United States.