Mark Pollock was five years old when he lost sight in his right eye. At 11, he developed a cataract in his left eye. When he was 22 years old he became blind.
Simone George was born to an African-Lebanese mother and an Irish father in a monocultural Ireland. Curious and intrigued by her ancestry, and having achieved a master’s degree in European law, George went and travelled the world. She returned to Ireland as a trailblazing human rights lawyer, championing female liberties and reshaping the way in which the Irish legal system deals with domestic abuse cases.
In 2004, Pollock returned from a trip to Miami invigorated with a determination to learn to dance to woo the women at the famed Mango Trees Cafe. George, a samba connoisseur following her stint in Spain, volunteered her free time to help him achieve his goal. From here begins the pair’s story, one that demonstrates the human capacity for endurance and a couple’s emphatic will to transcend barriers and make the impossible, possible.
“He asked me to teach him to dance.” George’s now-famous line, from the original TED Talk she and Pollock delivered in April of this year, set the stage for the couple’s TEDx talk on Monday, held in the packed chamber of the Graduates Memorial Building (GMB). The couple reminisced about the many dance classes they shared together in the very same building, just a few rooms over. Pollock, a Trinity student up until he lost his sight, spoke of his time in college with great warmth and fondness. “The last thing he saw”, George pointed out, “was the sun setting over the Campanile”.
Pollock went on from Trinity to become the first blind person to race to the South Pole and also won bronze and silver medals at the Commonwealth Rowing Championships in 2002. Indeed, it can most certainly be said that Pollock played the cards he was dealt with defiance and determination. It is no surprise that he has managed to forge a successful career as an international motivational speaker.
Fast forward to 2010 and suddenly Pollock was forced to re-confront the reality of his words of encouragement and inspiration when his world – and George’s – was completely thrown asunder. Pollock was over at a friend’s house. Feeling along the walls as a guide to the bathroom, he was met unexpectedly with an open window, which he fell out of. This event unquestionably changed his and Simone’s lives forever.
Pollock was paralysed from the waist down and was advised not to hope for a cure because it was “psychologically damaging”. But this ran counter to everything that the couple believed in: Pollock, a motivational speaker who had made history in the South Pole by defying the odds, and George, who had forged her career as a human rights lawyer not by accepting the problem but by seeking and fighting for the solution. Thus, the pair set themselves a goal: to find the cure to paralysis within their lifetime.
Over the past eight years, Simone and Mark have catalysed the research of engineers and scientists around the world to combine a robotic exoskeleton with the electrical stimulation of the spinal cord. This combination has managed to allow Mark to stand, regain some movement, and, as Pollock puts it, “to feel [his] legs under [him] for the first time since being paralysed”.
The couple’s tale is an astonishing one and certainly testifies to the human will to defy and overcome. George and Pollock came to the GMB to share their story once again but also to discuss the trials and triumphs of delivering a Ted Talk. When asked about the drawbacks of doing a Ted Talk, George joked: “Having to do a Ted Talk.”
The pair looked back on their preparation for the speech as incredibly challenging and demanding. Initially sticking to “how-to guides” for writing one, George and Pollock struggled to put the speech together, clinging to the established structures of talks gone by. However, once they escaped these self-imposed restrictions and told their story as they wanted to tell their story, it started to come together. Whatever their struggles preparing for the talk, their video, entitled “A love letter to realism in a time of grief”, has been viewed almost a million times.
The couple’s shared experience of grief, frustration and adversity has gripped the attention of many. While their viral Ted Talk has certainly bolstered the growth of the Mark Pollock Foundation (funding their ongoing ground-breaking research) as well as their Run in the Dark (which takes place in Dublin on November 7th), it is simply another step towards achieving their remarkable goal, not the conclusion to their tale.
Monday evening was one filled with awe-inspiring moments, tear-jerking tales and somehow, many laughs. Pollock and George answered questions with a personability and sincerity that brought a sense of intimacy to the packed out room and were certainly worthy recipients of the TEDx Trinity College Honorary Patronage Award.
