There’s a scene in the documentary I’ll Push You in which Patrick Gray—who is pushing his wheelchair-bound friend Justin Skeesuck across Spain on the Camino de Santiago—falls to the ground with leg cramps.
His soul is struggling along with his body. He’s lost control of the situation. The trip, even the care of his friend, is suddenly in jeopardy. Then other friends show up. Then more people they’d met earlier on the trail come, too. They offer to push Justin while Patrick rests.
It’s a difficult moment for Justin, who is used to accepting Patrick’s help. Not from all these strangers.
“But I’ve learned that if you don’t let people help, you rob them of the joy they find in that,” he says in the film. “The joy we find helping one another.”
The next scene shows Patrick in the lead, unfettered by the chair, all those friends doing the pushing. When they reach the top of the hill it’s joyous—the heart of the film. And only because Patrick couldn’t do it all by himself, and Justin’s humility allows others to step in.
Patrick recalled the moment during the Q&A following the screening in Salter Hall.
“Control is how I felt safe for years, and it translated into conflict with my wife, with my kids, with all kinds of people,” he said. “I feel blessed to have come face-to-face with it. People inflict a lot of pain upon themselves and others because they think they can do this all on their own.
“It’s a disease in our culture that we’ve got to eradicate, and the only way you can do that is to come together, acknowledge that you can’t do it all yourself. We need one another to get things done.”
The screening and visits of Gray and Skeesuck were funded by Larry Landis ’67 and other donors to the President’s Distinguished Speakers’ Series, as well as the Lecture and Film Committee.