Never Walked In High Heels

There is something immensely pleasing about running under the golden trees of autumn and watching the leaves fall. It is almost like the entire world for a moment, is showing off and becoming the absolute best that it can be. Often in the early evenings I take long walks and peer into the windows of warmly lit rooms. Inevitably, one sees families gathered around tables either doing homework or sitting down to dinner and on a particular November night; even though I am half way around the world I am reminded that this is the season to stop and give thanks, no matter where you are from, for the bounty that you receive either in the form of friends and loved ones who surround you or simply having food on your table.

Somehow Thanksgiving is always less precious than it’s stressed out holiday cousin of Christmas. You don’t hear over and over about the perfect Thanksgiving, the magical thanksgiving from childhood you always remember. Instead much of the family stress of making a day into some sort of idealized Rockwell disappears. We need only do one thing, and that is to be thankful, and while it should be the simplest thing to do, inevitably…it is not.

I sometimes think that Hallmark and other card companies must be incredibly frustrated with the holiday. They are still, despite their best efforts, unable to turn it into a manufactured reason to make money and increase their capital. There is no fairy or elf that comes along to sprinkle dust on you in the middle of the night and make you thankful for all you have been fortunate enough to receive. An image of such a creature inevitably sets me off laughing as he is somehow unimaginable. One being thankful is one action that no one can force upon you, nor can they magically impose a feeling of gratitude without your effort. Thankfulness is a choice, you choose to be thankful where you are and where you choose to be.

The duty of the holiday or the reason for the holiday is that an individual must be thankful for something, anything, and to someone. It could be that you are thankful to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for creating International Talk Like a Pirate Day; or you could be thankful to your mother because even though you are at the age of 45, she is still willing to clean you room. Be thankful to Buddha for laughing, or Christ for being crucified. What you are thankful for is immaterial. In this way the holiday is not distinctly religious, nor is it distinctly American as some social critics claim. Surely other cultures have much to be thankful for and find their own way to express gratitude to both entities or for such items. If one is unable to decide a single thing to be grateful for, then inevitably the very value of life comes into question.

A few years ago I shared Thanksgiving with a friend who absolutely dreaded the holiday. She insisted that it just seemed like pre-gaming before Christmas and one should simply celebrate the great holidays in December, leaving November to stand on its own. It’s easy to see this holiday as completely pointless; there are no gifts, there is no grand finale, and for the exception of the Macy’s Parade there is no common experience that unites the entire country together. Each family sits down to a dinner that is uniquely their own, be it a stuffed turkey and homemade cranberry sauce or macaroni and cheese. We spend time thanking each other because that is in many ways the most expensive currency we have and yet it is universal and our freedom to choose how those twenty four hours can illustrate our attitude about the things in life we treasure. If we cannot take time on such a day to be thankful, to stop and listen regardless of what goals are unmet and what desires we have that have been lost. What makes us think that we will ever be ready to receive the gifts of Christmas?

As soon as I saw him across the acting studio, something inside my brain said, “Steer clear, this one will break your heart, he is bad news.” The other side of my brain said, “Don’t be so judgmental, he hasn’t even opened his mouth yet. Give him a break.” So I got to know him anyway and we became friends over the course of a month and then a year later I discovered that the original alarm that had gone off inside my head was actually right.

We are told over and over again that one cannot judge a book by its cover but yet every once in a while a definite siren goes off in our heads and we are told very loudly that pre-judging someone is what we should be doing in order to steer clear of a massive problem. Certain signs we don’t consciously, notice and so we cant really justify why this sudden onset and strange feeling appears. Yet our subconscious sees them and the lights inevitably start flashing despite us having no proof. To discount those flashing lights is exactly what we are taught over and over that we are not supposed to do, “Don’t be judgmental, wait and let people show themselves according to their actions. Wait and love everyone regardless of how much your mind is unjustifiably screaming out ‘this is a really bad idea’”

Don’t get me wrong. I am, if anybody, the victim of first judgments. Often I wonder if people are incapable of hiding their first judgments as they speak to me as if my mental capacity was evident simply by observing my physical condition (this in turn gives me plenty of opportunity to judge them as I find that such an introduction is proof enough of action, but that’s beside the point) and we refuse everything only to say in the end, “We should have gone with our guts.”

What is the difference between a gut instinct and prejudice or a pre-judgment. I’m not really sure. Perhaps it’s only when you realize you were right all the time that you dare to call it a gut instinct, and if you are wrong or coming up with bad explanations, the world cries prejudice. Perhaps the difference is how hard one is willing to work against that instinct and how hurt one willing to be because that willful ignorance. Perhaps it is an item that only time will act as the great proof.

But I am learning, or at least trying to learn, to take those subtle voices inside my mind which do not come from a clear source, a little more seriously. Perhaps it’s a vain science experiment on my part to see how much of a soothsayer I can be. But in the end, I want to be able to look back and say “I went with my gut,” even if my gut was horribly horribly wrong. In my experience there is little worse than saying I ignored my gut and thus walked into a situation where my instincts told me I had no business. If I was warned internally that there would be trouble, it doesn’t matter how open or socially correct I was trying to be. There is no one to blame but myself.

Several years ago I found myself working in the mission fields of Mexico side by side with a nihilist who was acting as my personal assistant. I always enjoy working with nihilist; they tend to keep things in adequate perspective. After all, if you believe in nothing, then even the biggest crisis is no reason to lose one’s head. She was particularly special to me since she agreed to come help us build a drug rehab center and give herself with sweat and construction work by day, assisting me when we got back to the compound to rest, while at the same time proclaiming that she refused to believe in God, Faith, or even Existence. Stopping to rest and drink some Joya one afternoon I examined the local people passing by. Many were poor; many more were in need of something whether it was material or otherwise. I felt the sun on my back as I exclaimed “I feel sorry for them”.

“Why?” She made her question sound more like a statement than an inquisitive response as she undid her shawl which was currently on double duty between covering her legs on the days we were in churches and acting as a cool top on the days we were at work pouring and mixing cement. She never followed the conservative dress code of the organization she was with, and for that single opinionated explanation I respected her.

“They don’t even know what they are missing, it’s like they don’t know that they are poor and I feel bad that they will never rise to have the same advantages that I have.”

“Well they sure as hell won’t with people like you saying that!” I was shocked by her biting anger. This response was atypical of a person who insisted that nothing existed. She got down on one knee and looked me square in the eye, “Don’t ever tell people that they are poor, don’t even think about them having less than you. It’s when we label people as such that we place them in obscurity.”

Her point was fierce but one that I would do well to remember more often. I believe, particularly when working with young people, that when you hold a level of expectation in front of somebody they will do everything possible to rise to that level. Likewise if you out rightly label them as being poor or disadvantaged, disabled or even having “special needs,” they themselves will define their entire existence by such a label thus never having their eyes opened to the fact that someone out there thinks they have potential. The higher the standard presented, the higher a person will rise.

I often think of this proportional reality when I see people of my own age swooping in to fix a problem when they are unaware of the complexities and nuances involved. Many of my peers have insisted on serving human interests in an organization such as the Peace Corp. or attempting to justify it on an more academic level by getting their degrees in anthropology and insisting that they can save the world by their field work. Such an attitude is necessary in the role of a young person’s assistant. It acts as fuel to get us off to a roaring start. But often citing low standards and insisting that a group of people can not have much expected from them does little except to encourage dependency. Lowering standards is often seen as taking pity on a person, but inevitably someone who is pitied will become pitiful.

Perhaps I am more acutely aware of this issue because I myself have experienced so much help in the name of pity; people insisting that I needed more help than I actually did and should not be able to account for much. The thing is, even when a person attempting to give aid doesn’t say out right “I pity you”, you always know. Even their help seems stale or rancid and disingenuous. Their smiles seem deceitful and often well planned. Every act they commit, every item they give you simply reeks of false humility.

The difference between offering someone help out of pity and offering help because you empathize with their humanity is the difference between seeing people as belittling you and seeing people as equals. It is crucial for anyone attempting to perform acts of service to realize that quite easily, the roles could be reversed. The ones giving the service could become the individuals in need and the ones currently in need would have to take it upon themselves to serve. All of our states, our finances, our homes, our security is never fully established. One can jump from a single level of status in society to another within the blink of an eye. Service without pity, so that someday a person might not you’re your service, is to understand the crux of humanity. We all are desperate for others to honestly and willfully provide human aid and that we are never in need of pity.

There was a loud bang as I went through Russell Square. It sounded like a gunshot causing me to slam on the breaks of my wheelchair and look around. Someone ducks; someone else grasps his jacket and attempts to walk along a little swifter. I look down to the ground only to see that my back tire of my wheelchair has exploded and I am now left to limp my way home, dragging my entire left side behind me. It’s funny, whenever something like this happens I feel absolutely positively disabled and deformed. I can literally see (despite my friends telling me otherwise) that people are staring at me thinking, “Poor girl, she can’t even afford to have two fully functioning tires. She might as well try to manipulate through life having square wheels.”

My left side of the body where the tire has blown is not approximately two inches than my right side. Everything is completely off kilter, I feel like the hunchback of Notre Dame, and all I can hear is this annoying thunk thunk thunk as my wheelchair spins over on itself and attempts to fight its way past added friction. A blown out wheelchair wheel means that my entire life has gone askew; my entire life for the rest of the ride home will be extremely inconvenient, uncomfortable, clumsy and slow. Worst of all it’s the inevitable question that immediately starts coming.

“Excuse me miss, I wanted to let you know that you seem to have a very low tire.” Very low? Really? It’s flat. It’s flapping in the wind and I am very aware of it thank you very much; it has lowered my entire center of gravity. “Did I know I had a flat” is like asking if I had five fingers on one hand. Absolutely I see the evidence of it every meter I travel, why are you bothering to state the obvious?

On the bus ride alone, seven people tell me this fact. Perhaps I have actually misjudged the typical Londoner in assuming that he is highly unobservant. They seem to be very observant of the status of my wheelchair wheels, they just don’t seem to think the individual riding on the wheelchair would have any reason to find a flat even more obvious.

I suddenly cannot pass by a male without him commenting that I have a flat tire and offering or better yet, begging me to let them fix it. I politely decline and can’t help but think of the potential pick up lines that I am wasting to play the damsel in distress; the woman by the side of the road flashing her lights because she has a flat tire is simply too easy. Suddenly there is an over abundance of testosterone around me, so much so that it seems like everyone thinks I am too stupid to notice what they see plainly and every male I meet swears up and down that he is handy and could fix it in a flash.

After about three hours, I manage to make my way back into the flat. Flat in this instance being my living accommodation and not my flat tire. I work my chair which now has a quickly drained battery due to the increased friction back into my home and quickly plug it in. A few hours later I hear my roommate arrive, he is one of the few people who I would let touch my wheelchair. He has fixed his share of flat tires, broken lights, replaced about every square inch of the chair so much so that I know the object I am dependant on to get around London is in very good hands; Except I would have hoped that he didn’t utter the next words that flew out of his mouth after he greeted me.

“Hey, were you aware of the fact that you had a flat tire?”

A few weeks ago I witnessed my friend marry I guy I don’t particularly like. It’s not that he’s a bad person, but there are several red flags in their relationship already which make me very uncomfortable and I recognize these signs by failures in my own rocky friendships. It’s one of those situations where someone is so passive aggressive that it is hard to point to anything they are doing particularly wrong, but nonetheless  there are always stressful situations being handled very poorly.

When I last saw her before the wedding I tried everything I could possibly think of to understand what exactly she saw in this young man, and as a hidden agenda, I tried everything possible to dissuade her from marriage without saying outrightly “I don’t like the guy.” I was always hoping that by my questions, she would begin to question herself.  But the answers she gave me also satisfied her and so I returned home feeling frustrated that she was so convinced she was right.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m at an age where I have started to see my friends make mistakes. Huge mistakes. And I’m also at a point in my life where I am, perhaps for the first time, old enough to realize there is nothing I can do about those mistakes that they so readily endure. I can ramble all I want about my opinions but at the end of the day, many of my friends willingly choose not to listen at all and thus I have often learned it is best to say nothing and not ruin the friendship which might someday become crucial if my friends are ever unfortunate enough to fall into the mishaps that I unwillingly foresee. Often there is little I can do but sit and wait.

For this particular friend, it would be different if the guy she was going to marry was abusive or if she herself were somehow disabled or particularly vulnerable to living with a man who is far from being on par with excellence. However, in this particular case it is neither. I don’t think the day will come where he will ever turn around and beat his wife; and should she ever want to leave provided that her body continues to obey her as it does now, my friend will have no difficulty packing her own bags and walking out the door (or packing his bags and shoving him out).

Often it seems that the most loving thing is to give a friend the freedom to make mistakes while at the same time committing yourself loving them. I know this because I have gotten myself into similar, albeit more temporary situations. After one particularly hard separation, a friend called me and admitted that he saw it coming months before. “Why didn’t you tell me,” I bemoaned half angrily, half in mourning. He pointed out that despite his best intentions, I probably wouldn’t have listened anyways. And indeed knowing my faults as I do, had he expressed his reservations it might have made me all the more stubborn when it was time to get out. Forcing me to listen to him would without a doubt made the situation ten times worse.

I watch them walk down the aisle. Perhaps I am imagining problems or telling futures that belong to someone else and not to my friend. There is little I can do now as she prepares to put the ring on his finger and announce to everyone that they know their love is a commitment they are willing to work at no matter what the times may bring or the heartaches that may come as a result. All I can think sitting in the back pew, not knowing if I feel uncomfortable because everyone is feeling joy or something else telling me that this isn’t right.

I just hope they make it.

Communion Sunday brings out the OCD in me. Ever since I was little I would dread the first Sunday of the month in church. It was literally disaster waiting to happen. First there were plates stacked on top of each other filled with the worlds tiniest glasses filled to the brim with grape juice or wine, both of which stain horribly. My mother wouldn’t let me bring a container of salt with me to church as a precautionary measure, despite all of Christ’s allusions to us being ‘the salt of the earth.’ Then our church raised enough money to buy new carpeting for the sanctuary, thus also raising the stakes for the severe consequences of dropping that which was to be symbolic of the blood of Christ. As if that wasn’t enough tension, our elders never could get the knack of passing the plates along the pews. Inevitably the men would have to do something which resembled the Electric Slide down the aisle as they never knew which pew would end up with which plate next. Often two plates of bread would be coming at you from opposite sides and created a cosmological traffic jam.

I once visited my friend’s church and discovered that Catholics all drank out of the same cup. This, of course only added to my obsessive compulsive disorder. Communion Sunday was an enormous risk. Who was stupid enough to think this was a good idea?

The more I am involved in a church, the more I find myself looking to God and saying “How on earth did you ever think this was a good plan?” Just about every philosophical outlook on the world has some serious problem with the topic of free will. For those who believe in an all knowing, all loving and all powerful deity the issue is particularly sticky. We all want a deus ex machina to swoop down in a blaze of glory and fix it all when we are in a crisis. We want a god who is a very visible superhero, complete with tights and Jimmy Olsen taking photographic evidence. Even those of us who are absolute atheists would very much like to see a world which is a vast improvement on this one.

For the followers of Christ, free will in a fallen world is counterintuitive. The fact that one can freely come to the table and drink the wine which Christ gives us even when we are bumbling fools compared to our Host is shocking. What’s even more ironic to our ears is that God uses us, though we are responsible for spilling wine and forgetting which way the bread needs to be passed to take care of each other. As any guest at a dinner party will attest, there is little worse than embarrassing your host, even if it is by inadvertently dropping the wine on a beautiful new rug.

God would rather work through us and run the risk of us spilling his blood and passing his body around the wrong way than swooping in and doing everything through force. Our fumbling ways of messing up how things ought to be, misjudging what is needed to make the world truly better, even refusing to acknowledge who invited us into the banqueting hall in the first place, are exactly the actions of the type of misfits He’s always had in mind to create a perfect kingdom. To Him, it was better to risk it all and have our choice to partake in the dinner be made in freedom, than to sit down and force feed us a meal which was supposed to be celebratory.

As soon as I walk into a church and see the wine and the bread on the communion table, it takes all of my energy to not run the other direction. I worry about the plate falling, or myself choking on a piece of bread, knocking over a glass of wine or drinking at the wrong time. For a meal with the greatest cost, I confess that I am too concerned about the manners and customs to enjoy that which has been prepared especially for me. Thus making me more ungracious than the guest who, in a moment of joyful abandon, commits the worst faux pas.

“Don’t you dare let them get you down.” I am disappointed again and as always, armies of defense come to my aid whenever I am in danger of being defeated. Mostly I am thankful. These people who believe in me for some strange reason tell me to keep going and not focus on my defeats, but inevitably I do and inevitably these are the times I wish I felt absolutely nothing. I wish I were incapable of feeling. “Chin up” they say, “Don’t let them hurt you” and they encourage me to develop a thick skin as well as a resilience and resistance to those preventing me from chasing my dreams.

I have met people who have lost the ability to be hurt and I do admire them. I once met an actor with a severe birth defect who, after being rejected for years from different drama schools and training schemes, finally built his own as well as his own theatre company specifically for disabled people, both within the artist and production side as well as a disabled only audience. He is thought by many to be a great success and someone whom I should aspire to be. But when I met him I immediately saw that he is someone I could not hold up as a role model because of all of his rejection resulted in his attempts to shield himself and grow a strong exoskeleton. His anger not only is illustrated of his resilience, but also succumbed to bordering on hatefulness towards able bodied people. His is a story of frustration and having nothing but an uphill battle unaided by his extreme ideals and, this is the part that seems inevitable, resentment.

That protective layer of course stops the pain to some degree and inevitably rejection after rejection for years on end often causes all humility to go out the window. But in the case of a creative person, such is an extremely bad idea.

One of my all time favorite quotes by C.S Lewis is “I do not doubt that whatever misery God permits will be for our good, unless by rebellious will, we convert it to evil.” As difficult as such a philosophy may be to swallow, he does have an interesting point that our rejections and the injustices we face ultimately are in our hands to decide whether or not it can be used for our benefit or it will only be used to cause ourselves harm. What we do with such rejection, whether or not it makes us feel self-righteous or change our tactics makes us want to pack in and go home or simply fight all the more harder. It’s ultimately our decision.

Last night I was asked to a meeting for a particular program that I have been trying to get into for years. It was a FAQ session and at one point I raised my hand and asked what someone waiting to get into the program, hoping and willing to wait, should do during that time in which patience seems such and impossible virtue. The man at the front smiled and said, “Enjoy the journey.” To be honest I’m not enjoying the journey of years of rejection. After years of the same philosophy over and over, I don’t think it’s possible to enjoy it and I can’t help but feel a little smug when he looked me in the eye knowing about my years of frustration and, close range, delivered his thoughts. But I am learning on the journey. Learning about myself, humility, perseverance, the willingness to go on, the dedication it takes to accomplish my dream, and above all else I am doing my best to learn how to remain open to the pain. If I do not accept pain and if I turn away from it, it will only hinder my ability as an artist.

Self defense is ultimately a reflex. It’s in our nature to defend ourselves and not turn the other cheek in order to grow from rejection or even the red lights we get on the way to the destinations we know we belong. One has to allow learning from the pains and aches. This means having to feel at peace while scared of failure. Perhaps it is the greatest among us who fail, some such as Thomas Edison, we learn about because after his failures, came successes and perhaps there have been other great people who were at the top of their game that we never even hear of. But I do know that the greatest among us never fall victim to impatience or bitterness. They choose, often in defiance, when the entire world begs them not to, to keep their heart open avoid resentment, bitterness, and sarcasm. And in hardened places of the heart, they open themselves up for even more pain knowing that in the end it will heal over strangely and beautifully.

“I’m glad I don’t have to worry about any of that”, she began overconfidently. We were in the middle of a conversation about heaven and hell, faith, the afterlife, and the overall meaning of life. A friend who does everything possible not to think about these issues, finally stated not only her denial, but also her relief that these issues would never be a concern. She would never grow old, she would never have questions that for many remain unanswered regardless of having the best intentions to figure it all out in this life.

Many people I know often spend enormous amounts of energy swearing up and down that we are here by some sort of cosmic accident. A billion years ago something mutated and a couple thousand after that, something else mutated and so on and so forth so that there was a vast domino effect that actually took all of time thus far to create the world as we know it. Had the most miniscule thing gone wrong, we might not be here and overall they are okay with that. With age and penury suddenly people are faced with the limitations of human condition. All of the answers they clung close to throughout life, be it the idea that it doesn’t really matter or it matters only so long as we are capable of doing what we want, explodes in their face and they quickly begin to question the structure on which they built their life because their own physical structure is failing them. It is important that this usually comes at some point when they are often faced with the fact that their bodies, mind, their life as a whole, is going to fall short. In short, it’s when my friends get slapped in the face with the idea that they are human and not above breaking down physically or spiritually that the cosmos comes into question. Often I think it would be great not to have to be confronted with one’s own weaknesses until I was much older. To be able to go through most of life being perfectly capable of accomplishing exactly what I want, whether it’s running upstairs to get the book I forgot on my way out the door or running a marathon in order to raise money for breast cancer. Often I think it would be great not to be aware of all the conditions that I have become extremely aware of through having friends suffer through them. Most people in high school don’t know what any number of ailments or disabilities are and quite frankly they shouldn’t have to. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I always thought, to be like everyone else and not know that the struggle exists until I am a ripe old seventy something, retired, and living out my life exactly as an old person should. Watching my older friends (and sometimes, unfortunately, friends my own age) have that sudden flash of recognition in which they see for the first time that life is not as easy as they pre-supposed it was often causes my stomach to turn and myself want to cry out for them coming to the knowledge that I’ve always had and losing a sort of naivety and innocence that goes alongside Nietzche’s ubermensch inevitably when they lose this presumption, my friends begin to wonder if this is all there is in life, if we are just here by chance and if that’s all that matters.

For someone who has always been acutely aware of their weakness, who’s never had another option except for knowing the overwhelming truth, there is of course an advantage to this situation. Endurance and perseverance in a world that is made for perfectly able bodied people when the idea of perfection is extremely unrealistic for just about everybody in existence is absurd. Being in a state of physical adversity forces you to see the world as much bigger than yourself. It means that having to struggle more than most, you are forced to establish security beyond yourself knowing that, at any moment, you could become more dependent than you were the day before. It means not putting faith only in your own abilities, and it means knowing that there must be something greater than yourself no matter what that thing may be.

There are advantages and disadvantages of course to having what is considered the full capacity of a human being and losing it later in life and never having it to begin with. But as I watch my friends struggle with their own mortality, in many ways I am grateful for not having to do the same and being forced to ask the questions that are inevitable in life but always make everyone, regardless of age, extremely uncomfortable to have to ask. I am no one’s idea of a perfect human specimen, but I hope I am a richer human being for it.

My friend is more than happily drunk in the middle of making disparaging socio-economic comments and spouting off some of the most absurd political philosophy I have heard in my life. He spills part of his drink on the floor. We are in an English pub and as per usual, I am witnessing a social debate which would never hold up in practical circumstances. I can tell that everyone is looking at me, expecting me to say something to end the argument. I am notorious for pointing out logical flaws, particularly late at night and when others are inebriated. However I don’t want to say anything and to avoid eye contact, my iPhone is suddenly transformed into the most fascinating object in western civilization.

One of the worst things about having different physical limitations than everyone else (I almost wrote socially abnormal, but then realized that deep down we all fit into such a category) is that you have to work twice as hard to fit in. Growing up, the first two weeks of a new school were always awkward. The first few days the entire class would sit and stare at me in silence as I attempted to answer questions. An icy glaze covered the entire classroom as soon as my hand rose above my head to speak.

First impressions are always important. A visible difference between you and the standard norm, either in physical deformity, disability, or simply the wrong hair color sets everyone’s judgment against you. Suddenly all of the lessons that you learned in kindergarten, the ones about it doesn’t matter what you wear and all that counts is what’s on the inside, no longer apply. Now all that matters is who you are on the outside and how you portray yourself to the outside world. What you wear, how you speak, all contribute to a strangers quick judgments. People often look at me and assume that I have mental limitations as well as physical ones.

In my particular case, this means that there is no room to make mistakes on those first impressions. Growing up, going all through the month of September meant not raising my hand unless I was absolutely positively sure the answer I had was correct. This of course puts an end to most educational ideas. The world around me did not allow mistakes. Later in life this meant not entering an argument until I had reasonable and logical proof to point to. This was translated into refusing to be a hothead in pubs. Such a refusal goes strikingly against my nature. When you have a disability, there is no room to blurt something out without thinking. Doing so runs the risk of people automatically assuming that you are mentally retarded and usually, such an assumption is set against you anyways. Needless to say, all of this severely limits debate involvement while intoxicated and entering into arguments with intoxicated people.

I would like to live in a world that afforded me unreasonable arguments every once in a while. I would like to have an opinion and not have anything to back it up, but just keep it out of sheer pigheadedness. Unfortunately having unbridled opinion is something I can’t admit to having in public which, when I do have stubborn opinions, makes me want to hold them all the more tightly when I am amongst friends who already know that I am not what I fear to be. In an equal world, I would be able to let my guard down, but that has yet to occur. Rather, there are carefully measured times in which I can assert my views without fear of being judged the wrong way and times that I cannot. While this is true for anyone, usually it doesn’t automatically place you in a certain intelligence quota. The bombastic assumptions which are often thrown in my way doesn’t necessarily limit my freedom; my self expression is a choice I will always make. Sometimes I do limit myself by keeping silent and watching someone else actively prove himself a fool.

I was sending my electric chair careening down Tottenham Court Road while in abject anger. My muscles were tense, I was doing everything possible to dodge in and out of pedestrians and not get stuck behind any slow-moving tourists. Having just been told that my disability was going to prevent me from achieving my dreams, I was currently wishing that the instructor I had just left would fall down the stairs of her flat onto the icy pavement below and break a leg that evening if for no other reason than to show her just how frustrating having a condition that was less than ideal was. Then I remembered her crooked back and knobbly hands that were riddled with arthritis. I take a deep breath and slow my wheelchair to a reasonable walking pace, reminding myself that she does know on some level what it is like not to have the perfect body. She can empathize if she chooses to. She knows the frustration of hands which will not obey her brain and feet that shuffle along the floor that used to run when she was a girl. She knows her condition is becoming a chronic illness, and she is terrified. It seemed a little absurd, but I have to constantly remind myself of the frailty of the human condition, even as a person with a disability, an uncooperative body, looking the beast of frailty in the eye. I often forget that bodies break down because, according to some, mine was never built properly to begin with. I forget that, unlike me, most individuals don’t have a history of years struggling with their own physique under their belt by the time their physical capacity begins to deteriorate. I forget all of this and attempt to remember these simple and unalienable facts of life whenever anyone stands in opposition.

Sometimes, even after remembering the state of human affairs I would still like to speed up the process by running over a few toes and making certain people have to use crutches for six weeks just so that they can get a taste of my reality. I once had a high school teacher explain that it was a small kink in human DNA which causes differing characteristics. A tiny microscopic difference between all of us human beings creates so many silly boundaries and absurd demarcations as to what an individual considers normal and fully human and what some people would consider substandard. The most universal thing about the human condition however, is our own vulnerability and the fear that we all have of succumbing to it, but regardless of our level of terror brought about by the idea of opening one’s self wide and being honest about one’s condition, be it mental emotional or physical, inevitably we all find ourselves in vulnerable positions. To have relationships, to accept intellectual risk and encourage progress, just getting on a bike and riding down the street, getting into a car, stepping onto an aircraft, all of these choices, events, are the stuff that life is inevitably made of. Without these, the new ideas, the desire to mobilize ourselves, life would hardly be worth living so we need to accept that sometimes we do make ourselves vulnerable if for anything at all, but to experience life.

The absurdity of it all is that we continue to react negatively when someone does fall victim to their own vulnerability. Perhaps because some conditions such as arthritis, birth defects, and broken limbs are often out of our control. However if a condition is inevitable, what would ever possess us to lash out or entrap the victim of that condition? We wouldn’t think of becoming irritated by a fourteen year old because she menstruated for the first time. Such a change is, after all, is part of the human experience regardless of how awkward it may be. And yet, we often cannot look a person on his deathbed in the eye, much less our friend who was once perfectly able bodied now confined unexpectedly to a wheelchair after being struck down while in prime physical condition because of some ridiculous accident.

My impatience with the people who fall victim to these absurd beliefs , that life is only livable if one has full use of all four of his limbs and is the ideal weight, height, and intelligence comes from such peoples lack of experience. They have yet to learn what it is like to be dependent on other people who have very little in common with themselves. How, when you are hungry and you want a meal, it doesn’t matter what that persons’ skin color, religious or political beliefs are, all that matters is if they are willing and able to prepare hot food when one is considered unsafe in the kitchen. This forced dependency on each other, the ability to serve others unlike ourselves, and be served by individuals who you would never expect service from, it may well be these circumstances that make us vulnerable, and without them, we begin to lose our humanity.

It is one thing for a teacher to assume because of my physical condition I am unlike her and unable to find a place in “her society.” But the fact is, she is much closer to becoming like me than she would like to believe. It is the fact of living that one misread stoplight or piece of poor judgment on anyone’s part, not only our own, can cause us to wake up completely changed, dependent and confined in ways we never thought possible. I suppose in a way it is hard for me to remember that in her stubbornness to deny her flaws and weaknesses. She and I are much more alike than I care to admit.