I watched a really touching story last night regarding a teenage girl of 16 who lives in Najpur, India. Joyti Amge suffers from a condition similar to a Dwarf syndrome. She was born weighing only 3 pounds and now at the age of 16 she is only a mere 9 pounds and is 23 inches tall.

What touched me the most about the story is that Joyti is such a happy girl. She smiles and laughs alot. She has a positive attitude towards life. She mentions that at the age of 3 she knew that she was different from the rest of the kids. When everyone was getting taller she stayed the same, but now she has learned that she will always be different and she has come to accept it.

You would think after seeing the little girl I would feel pity towards her but in true fact it was the opposite. Her strong character and courage made me admire her instead. I laughed and cried while watching the documentary. Everytime she smiles I couldn't help smile too. Her smile even if it was just on television was so contagious! I cried not because I felt sorry she had to go through such a difficult life, but it was due to the fact she was so happy and accepting of it. In one interview she says she gets stressed out when she goes out cos people would come up to her mum and asks why is she so small, can she walk? what does she eat? but now she says she loves going out and meeting people.

Her parents are just fantastic. I know that most people would see her as a burden but not her parents. They see her as a blessing from God. Joyti has bone fractures from an accident she encountered in Kashmir. She is so fragile that when she slipped on ice she broke her right leg which refuse to heal and now she finds difficulty in walking. She only manages short distances and walks with a limp. Most of the time she is carried around by family members or her school mates. Her parents takes her to a hospital and decides for her to get surgery. However because she is so weak, she couldn't even withstand the blood test. The doctors were amazed because we all have taken blood tests in our lives and it is no more than a slight prick. It was so unbearable for Joyti that her parents decides to go against the surgery and brings her to a spiritual healer instead.

The Amge family is a devout Hindu. They take her to meet Sadhus (Hindu Holy Men) and they coo and fawn over Joyti because they believe she is a form of a goddess and they see her as a blessing. One of the Sadhus says to the parents that there are two ways you can see the situation. If they see Joyti as a burden, then all their lives they will encounter bad karma because from day one they believe it as a difficulty whereby if they see from the start that Joyti is a blessing then their lives will be filled with good karma. How true are those words? I am trying to apply that in my daily life. Every morning I wake up with a smile on my face and then I decide that the day will be the best day of my life. Like I mentioned in my previous blog, happiness is a choice. It is how you see things. When you believe the good, the good will happen.

Joyti has, in her case, an impossible dream. She cannot walk around unsupported but this does not stop her from wanting to fulfill her dream. Her dream is to become a Bollywood actress one day. Her not being able to walk does not faze her one bit in order to achieve that dream.

What I learned from this documentary is that even if we are 'different' it should not let us stop living our lives happily and not to let go of our dreams no matter how impossible it may be. All we need to do is to believe in ourselves and from there we can achieve great things and true happiness. Let it be a teaching to us all. We should be grateful with what we’ve got and embrace the good things that come our way instead of dwelling on what we haven’t got and focusing on the bad side of life.

I pray that one day Joyti will get to live her dream and leads a full life of good health and happiness