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Dennis Okada figures he was due for an awakening, a kick in the eye, a redirection.
"I was selfish," Okada says. "I wasn’t necessarily a bad guy, but I was too focused on myself. I didn’t care enough about others."
Unfortunately, as Carl Jung once posited, there is no coming into consciousness without pain. And Okada, bad guy or not, was in for a world of it.
It was January 1986, and Okada was riding high after his team won the U.S. National Spearfishing Championships in 1985.
Okada and his friends were spearing for uhu (parrotfish) off Rabbit Island. Okada had completed two seemingly ordinary dives when suddenly he passed out.
Okada’s friends recognized the early signs of the bends and rushed him to a decompression facility. At first it seemed like Okada would be all right, a couple of hours in the chamber, then home for dinner. But then complications arose and paralysis set in.
Okada spent 12 days in the 36-inch-wide chamber. And although he regained the use of his upper body, he would never walk again.
It didn’t make sense, Okada thought. He was young and, before the accident, strong enough to power through 4,000-meter training swims with no problem. Now he had to relearn how to feed himself.
"It took me years to accept my condition," Okada says. "I felt hopeless. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, and the worst part was I didn’t care."
Okada says he spent seven years reading the Bible and reflecting on his existence while his wife, Hanako, held things together.
"It was a long journey, but eventually I said, ‘OK, God is who he says he is,’" Okada says, chuckling. "I realized that there was eternal life, and that gave me hope. I could see down the road and know that this was not all there is."
Acclaimed mouth-painter Morris Nakamura encouraged Okada to explore painting. Skeptical, Okada stopped by his rehab center’s Louis Vuitton Creative Arts Program intending to leave early but instead falling in love.
Okada has since become one of the program’s shining stars, a painter who uses his gifts to reach out to others.
Okada is often asked to talk to new rehab patients, folks still lost in the dark woods of grief and confusion that Okada once knew all too well.
"I tell them that I’ve been there and it’s not easy," he says. "I tell them that there are some things that they may never do again, but it’s OK. There are things that you’re going to do that you may never have done otherwise. Outside, you may be sitting in a wheelchair, but inside you’ve got to stand up."
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