Never Walked In High Heels

My assistant carries my duffel bag to the stage door and stops. My body, covered with baby oil to simulate sweat, takes its last calm breath before mayhem begins. After I knock on the door, I won’t be able to go at my pace, my speed until we make our final bow in exactly eighty four minutes. Until then I will be moving at performance pace, performance speed, trying frantically to make jokes and complex ideas understood, keeping the audience’s energy up, all while making every stylized move seem natural. This is the job of a performer. This is the job I always wanted. I raise my hand to knock  on the door. My sister in the play opens is and looks appalled, just  like the director intended. I barge onto the stage in my wheelchair.

Instantly and, it seems, undetectable to a great many people, I feel the audience clench up.  It’s not me, I’ve been in enough performances to know what nerves are and how to adjust to them. This isn’t me, its them. Even in our modern age it seems we are still living in a world where as soon as a professional actor with a disability comes onto the stage, the audience becomes nervous, as if they are expecting to watch a train wreck in slow motion. Its  the threat of live performance and part of what makes theatre so addictive. Although we don’t want them to, the idea that action on stage is happening in real time and that performers might drop the ball puts us at the very edge of our seats. We like this risk, to a certain extent.

Unless you put a performer like me onstage. Trained by professionals myself, my performance style is unique at best. My speech is of a slightly different cadence, my movements aren’t always fluid. But my intentions are precise, my ideas clear and innovative, and my stories are, for the most bit, entertaining. And yet each time I go onstage I feel the wave of nerves from an audience wondering if they are about to witness a train wreck. Can she remember her lines? What did she just say?  How long is  she going to be  onstage? Who cast her in the first place and why  didn’t they get a proper actor?

Before you protest and say it’s nerves getting the better of me, I have a confession to make. In marketing my shows disability is never mentioned. My plays really aren’t about disability as it just isn’t a topic which interests me. Leave ghettoized theatre to quota seekers and box tickers. I write the story of human beings which I can play for two reasons. First, I am honestly bored. No one else is casting me in work and many of the companies who aim to do otherwise don’t write interesting characters with disabilities. By accomplishing both I am creating a sound body of work for myself. Contrary to all rumors, this is a top priority for any artist. One must  create work which excites you, if you ever want to have a shot at exciting anyone else. Secondly, my plays are about the human condition. Disability is meant to be a metaphor which allows the audience to lock into a character, not an implacable monolith of a topic. As such, I don’t advertise my plays as being disability art any more than  Whitman saw his poetry to be about homosexuality. Art is a reflection of the human condition which is universal, provided of course, we don’t foolishly become too bogged down by the specifics.

So in a way I’m asking for trouble. I don’t warn potential audience members of a major characteristic of the piece, one which, in fact, might make a number of people very uncomfortable. To my knowledge there is no disability advisory warning or any plot spoilers required for theatrical advertising. Anybody should be able to come on stage in the course of an evening and, so long as their acting abilities hold up, the audience should accept they belong in that story. And throughout western theatre history, the range of acceptable actors has grown to include multiple genders, ethnicities, ages, and a host of other factors. Actors with disabilities should stay in disability theatre it seems. Outside of myself, they are  rarely seen in the West End. And with an audience reaction like what I’ve witnessed, who can blame the producers for not casting people with disabilities. A nervous audience is rarely a paying audience.

While onstage, there is little I can do to ease audience tension except play me role well which, admittedly, is easier some nights than others. I am tied to a script, my hands bound to certain actions at certain times. As much as I would like to call the audience out and say ‘trust me would ya,’ it can’t happen. I am told by friends that after a few minutes the tension dies down and the audience begins to feel more at ease. If this happens I can’t tell when it occurs. By that time I’m so far in the story I’ve forgotten about the audience’s existence. I have taken note of the tension but refused to take it on. I know my work is good and the audience can’t walk out. The door is shut, the lights are low, and for the next hour and a half they have to deal with the surprise of having an actor with a disability on stage.  If that’s such a shocking idea, then I don’t care what the reviews say, the fact the piece exists is enough.

What more could any artist ask for?

About a week ago, I sat down for what I now call ‘a voluntary guilt fest.’ Fully knowing that I was doing so, I walked into a theatre and sat down to see a production about the environmental crisis.  The only difference between this production about climate change and the other six I’ve seen in the past twelve months (two of which in this exact same theatre) is that this production was without an intermission… an element which was sorely missed.

I’m not interested in debates about the environment right now. Do not for a moment think that  am saying that environmental concerns are not a problem. Improving conditions and reducing all sorts of footprints in this planet are as much of encouraging progress as establishing justice. That’s not the issue here. What’s more consternating is that in the face of a major global concern such as this one, artists and writers are merely rehashing stories from each other rather than coming up with original and particularly poignant ones.

In the 1980’s the adage was “sex sells.” Now sex, perhaps in a twist of victorian moral irony, has been replaced by fear. Fear sells theatre tickets and gets artistic grants.  How many plot lines do I have do sit through about concerned women who don’t want to have babies and raise children because the hole in the ozone is continuing to expand? Should I really find it shocking when la creme de la creme of society meets for a global summit on climate change and, as what is heralded as a ‘breathtaking plot twist’ we see big wigs and cronies in some back room making deals which serve to not to act their own self interest? Am I really supposed to be crestfallen when I see the environmental scientist, who is supposed to be the good guy, retract his scientific study because airline executives have offered him a bribe which can help pay for chemo therapy for his sick wife, who got cancer in the first place from aiding him with his research?

Are these repeated and redundant story lines the best creative artists can give us on an issue which looms above every single person on the planet?

Artists, particularly thespians I am told, are supposed to ‘hold a mirror up to nature.‘ Forgiving the horrible pun on the word ‘nature’, somehow we keep holding a mirror  to the same bits of nature over and over again until redundant stories strike a combination of fear and apathy into our hearts until audience members are paralyzed.  And while terrifying the life out of an audience of 750 people nightly is a feat that most artists would be proud of, a seemingly hopeless situation does little to encourage people to take action. Add to that the fact that plot lines are being repeated over and over and you get a hopeless situation and learned helplessness.

If artists want people to take action over a problem, they cannot rely on stories that have been retold a thousand times before. Playing to the critics by using the same points which were tried and true in the last production about the same topic is not a form of creativity but redundancy. Why not, rather than making the audience feel guilty and fearful, figure out a way to empower them into making a change? There comes a point that all thespians need to accept that folks must leave the theatre and go home. When audience members walk into their kitchen, toss their keys on the table, and take off their jackets, do we want them to then go hide under the bed, or figure out how to make the world a better place as a result of the performance they just saw?

Productions about the environmental crisis, in Britain at least, have turned into sacred tomes which cannot be criticized by anyone who wishes to remain fashionable. But art that cannot spark a debate or move people to action no longer shows us a hope in a world which might be. Thus we get lost in the despair of the world that is.

It’ll be a long while before I go back for a voluntary guilt fest. Unfortunately as long as people and grant committees are interested in giving their attention to shows which are meant to explore the environmental crisis, there will be unoriginal productions on the subject. If the resources are there to support certain productions, those resources will be exploited until a whistle blower says “this isn’t good enough, our standards need to change.”

Funny, isn’t it? Exploitation and status quo continues the same way in every field imaginable.

By the time I put her on the plane, I had no idea how I was going to survive without my friend. A s.n.a.f.u at immigration put a friend who came to visit me on holiday back in the US for another six weeks. Thus all my plans for companionship, a friend to lend an extra hand, and not having to come home to an empty house, were thwarted.

At the same time, my long time assistant was moving out, leaving me very little time to find someone new to cook, clean, feed me my meals, and help with other minor but much needed tasks. Then, in a moment of divine irony, an email came through my inbox with the subject heading “What feeds you?” The gods were laughing.

The most difficult thing about my disability is that, even well into adulthood, I cannot make a meal or feed it to myself. All other aspects of life in a wheelchair I’ve just about been able to wrap my head around. I wear shoes which I never have to tie, I get my hair washed by a salon, I’m even quite good at flirting in pubs so I can get guys to help me walk down the stairs to visit the toilets. But all of this requires calories to burn, which in turn requires the intake of food, which is one area of my life that I have zero control over. Having to depend on others for food is like a country having to depend on OPEC for energy, sooner or later everyone else has you over a barrel.

I once heard a homeless woman being interviewed remark that the hardest thing about being in her position was not knowing where her next meal was coming from. Although I am far from being homeless, I know exactly how terrifying that feels. It is a kind of poverty which is not dictated by the wallet or by some stockpile of faith. At least three times a week there comes a point where I have no idea when or how I’m going to eat again and unless I’m willing to put some pieces together, I have no idea how that can possibly change. My last meal could quite possibly be exactly what it sounds like.

There’s about as many differing definitions for the word poverty as there are organizations set up to work towards its end. In my flat in London I’ve never dared to think of myself as being impoverished. But, after my curiosity being peaked and doing a little research, I realized that every single one of these definitions mentioned a lack of what is essential for survival. Does the fact that I have gone multiple days without food put me on the edge of the poverty line, even while I sit in a riverside flat trying to figure out the next alternative for food? Or perhaps this simply makes me a bad planner.

No parent wants his children to grow up not knowing where their next meal is coming from. For that matter no parent wants to see his child lack in anything. If the certainty of a next meal is the minimum standard for successful parenting, then my mother and father failed miserably. And yet the wealth of what they could give me allows me to survive in a world where nothing is guaranteed, even my next meal.

If poverty, as some organizations such as the UN defines it, is simply the lacking of a necessity in life, then we are all impoverished in one form or another. And in many cases it is the “wealthiest” amongst us who are actually the most impoverished. The myth of an independent and self sufficient life, reflected in even these definitions of poverty, not only perpetuates a misconception but also actively pulls us away from relationships of interdependence. If we are loved, we may not know where the next meal is coming from, but we do know those around us will not let us starve. Someone will notice, someone will help, provided we are willing to show our blatant vulnerability freely, and admit we are all lacking in something which is needed to survive this difficult task called living.

Looking back to the times I’ve been without food, without help, temporarily impoverished as it were, much of it has been due to my own stubbornness and unwillingness to admit to my own need. I am not saying that doing so would wipe out poverty or all hungry people would have their problems solved if they simply admitted they needed help. My disability does not go away simply because I have the assistance I need. The fact I am being fed does not negate the fact I cannot feed myself anymore than the fact a homeless man has a bed for the night negate the fact that he is, indeed, homeless. But we are lying to ourselves if we do not admit that each of us are in need of something which makes life livable.

I cannot feed myself and that’s awful. More days than I care to count I’ve spent vast stores of energy trying to figure out where my next meal is coming from. By some standards this would label me as being ‘impoverished.’ But it is what we lack as well as our excesses which make us interact and inspire life into each other when no other solution would allow us to maintain momentum. I am unable to eat on my own and the solution to this problem means I have a wealth of dinner dates and friends to meet for coffee who tell me that I feed them as much as they feed me. Usually I do a pretty good job lining up these appointments 3 times a day to ensure I do not go hungry. On the days that this fails, I am forced to admit my weakness rather than letting it be implicit. I am forced to call someone and say “I need help.” And I am forced to admit that with the number of people who love me enough to come to my aide, I am far from being impoverished.

I believe firmly in the power of the individual. That’s not a particularly popular statement to say these days. We are told over and over by our world that it is best if we don’t think of the self, but rather what we can do to help the world as a whole and focus on others rather than just ourselves. While this altruistic theory is admirable it forgets one key thing…often it takes the individual in all of his uniqueness in refusing to settle for the status quo that can ultimately improve circumstances for everyone.

A friend once told me, “It is the person who is aware that he has more advantages than those around him who can use those same advantages to change the world for the people who lack them.” I believe what he meant was, that one cannot be afraid to hide one’s talents and to stand out in a crowd by doing the best that one absolutely can when some of those around him are unable to perform at the same level. Furthermore what he meant was, a social leader (someone who is truly capable of bettering the world and changing conditions for everyone) must carefully balance along a philosophical tightrope. One hand hovering over self understanding and the other reaching for how he can use his best qualities to aid the situation he finds himself in. In short, perhaps the industrialists of the 20th century weren’t so far off when they insisted loudly over and over again that the cream that rises to the top sweetens all of the milk.

To put it another way, using a biblical reference which was made famous by comic book character Uncle Ben in Spiderman: “To him whom much is given, much is expected.” It is the responsibility of the exceptionally gifted to realize where they could be and in actuality where they are, understanding the schism is how change starts. Often it takes the best educated, the most cunning, and those with the greatest skill in writing and rhetoric to attack issues of injustice. If anyone, regardless of their level of education or skill was able to attack these sentiments, it is doubtful that there would be issues of inequality in the first place. Often it is the financially blessed who have the time and energy to pull themselves full steam into social causes that would otherwise be ignored, understaffed or mishandled if left up to those who have to carry full time jobs and maintain a steady income.

In writing this I cannot help but look around and examine my own living conditions, realizing that I am indeed exceptionally blessed regardless of my struggles and even though most individuals who meet me are faced at one time or another with grappling with all that I cannot do rather than all of my positive and viable assets. While most people in my life see me as struggling, I cannot help but swallow hard when I see another disabled person in the street. Who is alone, and not provided for as I am. It forces me to realize that my struggles are like most of us, exceptionally small in comparison and an understanding that I am indeed one of the fortunate ones. One who is able to express herself and stand up in one form or another for what she believes in and who is able to take rests in between the periods when great perseverance is required. I admit that there is so much work that is yet to be done, and that those tasks include my own sacrifices as well as those of the greater collective.

It’s the signs of the season. Every single coffee shop changes their plain white cups to red ones with snowflakes on them in an effort to be more festive. The light on the trees sparkle and cause domestic disturbances across the country because he didn’t hang the lights the way she thought they would look appealing. Everything is green, red, or blue even if it doesn’t mean to be particularly festive. Our brains work it into that exact classification. Christmas brings out of everyone the kind and excessive spirit; and the token cripple on the street gets all of it. It comes in the form of doors opening and baristas who refuse to charge me for a cup of coffee. At Christmas time I consistently get money handed to me by complete strangers on the street as if I was some Las Vegas hooker.

I don’t know what they expect me to do with this small fortune that they generously give me in the name of Christmas spirit. Sometimes when it happens I am headed out to the office in a suit and five inch stiletto heels, my hair done up in a tight bun, and the stresses of business pressing on my mind. Do they expect me to buy a weeks worth of groceries with it? Is it simply a nice gesture so I can buy myself a little something special? I’m always confused on how exactly to respond and despite looking, I have yet to find a manners book which adequately explains the protocol of accepting money on the street from perfect strangers.

When I was younger this sort of behavior used to happen me all year round. It took other forms of course. I would be in the grocery store looking around in certain aisles and a perfect stranger decided to get whatever it was on the top-shelf which I happened to be looking at, bring it down and put it in my basket. It didn’t matter if I voiced that I wanted it or not; the product was being stared at and therefore it ought to be mine. I thought that this type of behavior would go away in London since it is the land of the stiff upper lip and somewhat emotionally repressed individual. In addition, I thought that maybe with age and a business suit the alms I was given would stop as well. For the most part I was right, it does. Except during the most wonderful time of the year. Then it seems to be a charity free for all.

To make matters worse I am quite literally living in the homeland of “Tiny Tim.” The Dickensian idea of the crippled child who loves God and blesses everyone seems to run rampant on television as every single BBC channel seems to show a different version of ‘A Christmas Carol.” From December 1^st through the 25^th it’s like everyone wants to see themselves as the redeemed Scrooge and rather than buying the goose in the window and sending it to Mr. Cratchit, they do the modern equivalent by offering to pay for my chai tea latte with soy milk or simply place a fiver in my lap and patting my head as they go by. It seems, spited as I may be, suddenly when the baby Jesus’ come out and ice skating is on the top of every fashionable young persons to-do list; everyone wants to be in a Dickens novel and so they race to the closest person with a disability they can find.

The more I fight their good intentions, assuring them that I don’t need their money, I own my own company and can get along just fine thank you very much, the more they insist. And so it becomes a circular debate in the extremes. They want to give me the money and I keep saying I don’t want it; thus making me look like the more humble individual and so they want to give it to me even more. Usually I lose the fight simply because my hands don’t work and so when they thrust the gifts into my lap I am unable to give the cash back to them before they pat me on the head and run off. Usually I am quickly able to find someone who is truly in need to give it to. After all, that is what the original giver wished to have happen with that portion of their hard earned income.

I am sure there was a time in my life where I fit the stereotype of Tiny Tim very well. I was young, loved God, and decisively optimistic. While I still fit into those categories, as an adult I now own my own company and wear skinny jeans and knee-high boots rather than the modest clothing that such a character would wear. However, it became clear that I was a long way off from outgrowing the public’s perception that I am the innocent disabled child that is able to melt hearts and bring joy; regardless of the fact that I had no sleep, have been suffering from cramps all day, and managed to get into a huge fight with my roommate about whether or not ketchup should be refrigerated. Even at my age and having I still don’t know how to stop the Christmas charity of being given money by complete strangers. I would like to stop it completely because where I come from, throwing money at a woman going down the street means something that no doubt would make Tiny Tim blush.

The girl next to me was crying so hard that snot was coming out of her nose. I didn’t know it was possible to be next to someone who was sobbing so hard and yet feel absolutely nothing. Our director and leader of the course, I felt, had manipulated us all into this dramatic situation. For weeks she had been going on and on about how terrifying an impending environmental crisis would be, and that the government and news outlets had yet to report the “real” event that they knew was approaching. She warned the class that it would upset us all, therefore she would not tell us and then today after lunch she decided that she would tell us if we would vote unanimously that that is what we wanted to hear. I really didn’t care, but being the last person to vote out loud I said that I wouldn’t mind hearing it either. Within five minutes the girl next to me was in tears out of full, unadulterated fear about our impending doom which of course to her, would come in the next decade.

She was in one of those situations where she was afraid of not knowing the truth and yet horrified to learn about it. And so, she would remark later, she went home terrified, analyzing how her life would change should the economy collapse and clean water become impossible to find. She was shaking as she packed up her books, got on the tube and went to lie down in her own bed at home. Of course, on this particular day the sun was shining and the birds were singing. There was nothing to fear. That is how panic works. The nature of panic comes at its finest when there is nothing, absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It comes in and paralyzes us all so that even the daily tasks of getting out of bed in the morning become mountains to climb.

When panic comes into play we all stop thinking, which of course is the absolute worst thing possible to do. It is the equivalent of taking our hands off the wheel when we run across a patch of black ice while driving down the motorway. We stop thinking. We go into what is commonly known as “survival mode.”

Of course in our society today there are entire industries built on keeping panic alive within the population. One needs only to look towards journalism to see this, the health industry, the safety industry, the insurance industry. All of these different services are in and of themselves good. But they have figured out that if they keep people running around attempting to prevent one disaster after the next by constantly feeding them such a constant source of panic, its better for their industry in general. Who would not want to keep their family and loved one’s safe? Who would want to, after a disaster say, I should have bought X and Y and then all of our lives could have been saved. But its the equivalent of having one of those extremely draining friends who always need a crisis to be dealing with in order to make life interesting and so they flit, creating crises, squabbles, panic from one person to the next in order to ensure their survival and to keep themselves dependent on other people.

Inevitably, when we listen to the news broadcasts, the insurance commercial, read the health & safety pamphlets, we all fall for it. As if this world were at one time blissful and perfect, now needs us to be alert to all the dangers out there. The world was never without danger, there has always been some disaster looming on the horizon and sometimes unfortunately coming straight to our front door. Perhaps I can say this because in my own life, I have never known it to be anything else. In my own life I could see that once one battle is fought, another one will come, so forth and so on.

There finally came a time for me that I had been scared for so long, afraid of what school administrators might do next, what discrimination I would next encounter, what friend would get the next form of meningitis that able bodied people were not susceptible to. Eventually the panic wore off and I became immune. Realizing that this life, as uncomfortable as it often was, is what my life is going to be like. I might as well get used to that fact instead of succumbing to panic and not allowing anyone else to feed such paralysis.

It is the nature of panic to put blinders on. Permitting only a limited and self-centered view of the world. It is impractical, and more often than not succumbing to panic works its way into allowing room for a crisis to take over. Perhaps it is because I am a person of faith that I have generally accepted from day one, that the world will end. That is how my parents taught me, and so ironically, when we talk about the end of the world in classrooms and in debates, I feel nothing. Simply…happy that someday it will all be gone and perhaps there will be nothing or perhaps there will be something better to take its place. But that better option will never come, the improvements will never be seen and the joy we all long for will never be created if we succumb to panic.

Over the past five years the word “community” has gotten a terrible name. We talk about community programs and community organizers. Not entirely sure what either name truly means. Grants for everything possible to encourage community living, art that is reflective of a certain community and encouraging projects that will help a community grow. With all this pressure to think of people as communities one thing is for sure, a genuine community is extraordinarily rare.

Just about every major religion stresses the importance of community. Sharing your life amongst other people, your frustrations, conflicts, sadness and joy keeps living in perspective. The world becomes bigger than just you, yourself and your family. There is genuine concern for others that you share your life with and from those who share their lives with you, even without the binding of blood. As far back as anyone can remember, humans were meant to be communal people. Trusting each other, relying on shared resources and even conflicts in order to lead to the betterment of the whole. Living this way means that people know your problems, your strengths and weaknesses, every annoying and gentle part of you. Best of all though, the people you surround yourself with, over time, really grow to know you.

Many say that in the modern world we no longer need to be dependent on other people. But, this is not true. Perhaps physically it is absolutely right, most people can survive working from home and ordering groceries from the Tesco online store. Their food and the necessities of daily living will be supplied. I myself could not survive in such a manner, but of course, I am the exception and not the rule. But even if I could physically, be independent enough to cook my own meals, mind my own house, keep up with a job by living at home. I don’t think I could live, I would survive certainly, but looking at my life now the problems seem overwhelming. The only way to survive this burden is by sharing it with others. The truth is, mentally and emotionally I need to be part of a group of people who are willing to love me, put up with me unconditionally and even chastise me when I’m wrong. I’m not looking for parents so much as I am looking for someone to share my life with.

Of course within the past three years, I don’t think amidst all the craziness I would have been able to get by without the community that I can now recognize and find myself in. This of course might be the absurdity in organizations, grants and governing bodies trying everything possible to jam a community down the throats of its constituents. A group of people living together and relying on each other happens without most of us realizing it. That’s when sharing lives becomes a genuine and easy experience. Of course this means making a sacrifice. Admitting that my life is out of control and going absolutely crazy means that I can no longer lie to myself. It means that people hold me accountable to my actions towards myself, towards them and towards their families, so that I might grow, learn and thrive in a way that I may not be able to if I had all my needs met yet still insisted on living in solitary confinement. It means of course we grate on each other. But, overall, we have formed a community without trying.

There is an ongoing joke I have among my friends that one day I walked into my flat only to find that there was someone uninvited in my kitchen, another one using my internet and a third one lying down in my bedroom. During this discovery a fourth one came over explaining that his shower was broken and was only putting out cold water, wondering if he could use mine. I am lucky to have fallen into a community with women who bake every Saturday and men who drop by when they are in need of the internet or have found out that I have a broken toilet. It does mean that I have made a sacrifice and that the quiet moments are rare. I am challenged continually by the people who surround me, even on the days I would like to go home and avoid everyone. But this assures me that within my community not only do I never have the benefits of an empty house, I will never have the downfall of an empty life.

After he left I was in a panic. My friend had come over to do some work on the house and in the process of accomplishing various tasks, he let slip the latest news release on how the world is supposedly going to end. Part of me immediately fell into the trap, and then the more logical side woke up when he said “Things will be as terrible as they used to be,” and I thought to myself, the world kept on turning before modern technology. If we lose it now, regardless of the worst case scenario, the world will keep turning still, and somehow everything will be alright. Perhaps I am forced to think with this level head on my shoulders because I know if it was Armageddon, I am doomed. I am considered physically weak and according to evolution and survival of the fittest I shouldn’t have made it this far at all. I have visions of myself succumbing to cannibals when food becomes scarce and I just think, “Really, what can I do?”

Part of this is because I have taken the time in my mind to examine the worth of life, any life, just existing regardless of what we accomplish or what we are physically or mentally capable of doing. To do this, one must determine what he means by the word “worth” or more importantly, what he means by the word “life.” Such big philosophical questions often have more of a practical application when it comes to examining family affairs. The older generations define both with dignity. My fascination with the subject probably began when the matriarch of my mothers side of the family was succumbing to the final gruesome stages of Alzheimer’s after ten years of struggling with the ailment. At that time all of us in the family had to examine what we meant when we said the word “life.” What is a single life worth?

It’s easy to fall into the utilitarian trap of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but often it is the individual lives that lead to any great good for a great many people. I think Henry Ford and the first assembly line. It is one of history’s greatest ironies thata the live of the man who invented the assembly line points to the fact that no discovery or invention was started by a collective, and they certainly not a collective deemed to be in charge of the world. Yet while they are simply individualized single lives that together if died en masse, would make up a statistic. The world would look incomparable to how it looks now if these people never lived long enough to give the world their greatest creations.

A premature loss of life either by tragedy, brutality, or someone deeming the situation “for the best” is a premature loss of possibility for the world. These possibilities mean options are exactly what we need in crisis situations. People who are willing to look at the world in all of its ugliness and examine what exactly what needs to be done to make it better are the type of people that end massive tragedies.

To the people who seek to solve the problem by saying over and over, the “greatest good for the greatest number of people, I wish to say “at what time?” Einstein wasn’t particularly bright growing up and if he were brought up somewhere else he probably wouldn’t have become the amazing scientist that was living inside him even in his early years. Sometimes the benefit we can give the world must be allowed to safely and securely grow before it becomes apparent. It is for this reason that I question such dangerous practices and panicked forms of thinking which dictate that we live for survival rather than living for life.

I truly believe that there is no such thing as a wasted life. Even the most dependent among us, those that often seem a burden and are unable to attain any goal other than simply existing teach us how wonderful life is and how beautiful we are by just being ourselves comfortably without striving to be more than simply who each of us were made to be. In short, even those of us who are most in need of assistance, unable to perform the most basic tasks, teaches volumes which are so easily forgotten.

The world in general seems to have it’s favored causes. Put on any news station or get any paper and you see the same issues over and over again from environmentalism, the desperate longings for prominent issues such as gay rights, taxes, immigration status to be solved and verified. Favored causes are pushed both by the media and academics into our living rooms and classrooms. In both examples, there is the perfect target audience; someone who is unable to escape the lectures of a reporter or professor either because that individual is in their home or is the recipient of the listeners tuition.

We all know the plight of the panda, the anguish of certain anorexic superstars, the heinous hysteria of healthcare and so forth, and these are admirable causes but what about the issues that we never see. How very few of us know about the dying rooms in countries like China dedicated to the starvation of infant girls, or that the western media often forgets to carry news of South Africans rioting? The situation of orphans being turned out of orphanages at an extremely young age in Russia, or simply the fact that there are still people in America forced to work for next to nothing?

I admit that I am biased, as a woman with a disability my issues seem to never fall into favor with the media. People assume that the London Underground is accessible just because there is a law and discrimination has been “terminated” worldwide. It gets next to no media coverage and, truth be told, most academics are not even aware of these situations, so why should anyone know about certain struggles when there is little done to report of them?

A friend of mine said the other day over a dinner conversation that watching the news now sends him into panic attacks. There are so many issues he is made aware of by the BBC and CNN that there is no other response he can summon up in himself except for panic. I couldn’t help but think and admittedly I added to his panic in stating this; it isn’t the issues that we know about of which we should be concerned, rather the one’s we don’t hear about that are the most dreadful and most sinister. For every missing child the media races after, there are dozens others that are never found and the stories lost. A particularly gruesome murder is only represented as many others go unnoticed. The world is not as horrible as it appears on the news, but in truth, we only receive a fraction of the story.

There are of course and always will be favored causes that seem to get all of the media attention; the grants, the money from the government, and even the justification of admiring friends, and there are some that don’t matter in the world to us regardless of how closely they touch our own hearts. Perhaps these are the issues we should be dedicated to, the ones we feel we are personally invested in regardless of the fact that they are currently the popular and dramatic issues or not. It is precisely because the media does not hold a certain issue as a favored cause that we would do well to make it our own. 

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.