Never Walked In High Heels

The credits roll across the movie screen as we step down the stadium seating to my wheelchair. It was one of those movies that is supposed to give you chills and send tears to your eyes all at once, and, in every conceivable way, it succeeded. This was a movie about the ending of the slave trade, an issue that, today, seems absurd that men could possibly think of as right for centuries. I sat back down in my wheelchair and quickly left the theatre with my friend.

“What took them so long to end slavery?” she asked me with the honesty of someone who simply wants an explanation in order to settle one’s conscience.

“Didn’t you see the movie?” That’s not what she meant, of course. She didn’t want the reasons as to the logistics of why the horrific trafficking of human beings kept on year after year. She wanted to know how the vast majority of people could ever think that it was right. “It kind of makes you wonder what issue will be fought for the next 300 years from now, future generations gasp in horror because we allowed such injustices to continue.”

And it was an amazing point. In order for humans to progress, changes must of course be made. The fact that 500 years ago a man was simply a subject of a king, women couldn’t vote 100 years ago, or 50 years ago a black man had to sit at the back of the bus, seems inconceivable now. We look back at the men and women who came before us and it’s sort of shocking, wondering how on earth they could ever have slept with a clear conscience and not gotten up with the vision of a battle to fight every morning. How could the status quo of the past have been kept on so long if it was so blatantly evil, to the point where it did not value human beings’ lives as their own?

But, of course, it went on until a small handful of people realized that slavery was wrong and not part of god’s vision for the treatment of humans towards each other. This small handful acted as literally a gadfly on civilization, so small but refusing to go away and be killed, while everyone else thought that they were crazy. If we believe in progress today, we must inevitably understand the same to be true. That there will be an issue that the majority of the people pass by and let go, which is wrong, and future generations will point to us and say, “How on earth could you have let that go on for so long?”

Unfortunately, I do not know what that issue will be. I know what I would like it to be. The troubles and aggravations I see in daily life are battles that will not allow me to rest until they are won, but that doesn’t mean that mankind will be any closer to winning them in my lifetime, or in my childrens’. But there are issues out there a majority of us simply pass over, myself included, without seeing the horrific repercussions of such actions. And all we can do is hope that we might see and understand what these issues are and take action to end them very soon, before the future generations turn to us and ask why.