Never Walked In High Heels

The year is more than three quarters of the way finished and I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world. As a challenge to myself I have decided as a new years resolution back in January that I would go an entire year without watching a single news update. As a result, it would not be too much to say that from my point of view, the entire world has changed. I find that as a result of not listening to the news I have much more love to give and many more experiences that I cannot help but think of whenever I enter a pub and hear the men arguing back and forth.

The people who are directly in front of me in my life, I am able to look at and think of more often. I am no longer interested in what their argument is and how I can persuade them to agree with me. I watch people as they talk to me and become concerned with their news and their lives, realizing that what the media constantly puts on as being crucial doesn’t matter so much as examining the lives of the people directly in front of me and seeing what exactly needs to be done to improve our own condition. The most important people in the world are not the ones with the power that live in big houses and have three different secretaries, rather they are the individuals who go out of their way to show me love and are able to experience life in tandem with me.

Furthermore, not watching the news ended all hopes of there ever being any sort of justifiable television watching. The news is the appropriate form of procrastination when one really stops to think about it. It’s the pretense of being actively concerned with the world and hoping to reshape it combined with a sense of false charity that allows an individual to feel good about himself and remaining educated while still sitting on the couch all day transfixed with what the news reporter is saying.

And finally as a result of not watching the news, I worry less; or at the very least, I worry about different things. I realize that the over hyped and manufactured fantasies that scroll across the bottom of one’s television screen are just another turn in the cycle of history. And while technology, products and quite possibly the fashionable length of hem lines differ from generation to generation, the major debates do not. What is the role of the government in the life of the individual? How can we remain safe, protected, and free? What needs to be done to make the world better and what is being done to provide fewer amenities to those who actually need more?

I think with three quarters of the year already passed and myself blissfully unaware of what exactly has gone on in the news, I am forced to realize that the media hysteria which is masterfully fashioned as some sort of guerilla psychology is simply a form of socially acceptable attempts to change the world. Changing the world has never been something that is particularly well thought of or thought out within the drawing rooms of society. Talking about altering the world might be popular, but actually doing so and evading peoples’ minds and attitudes in order to see a necessary revolution is undoubtedly frowned upon. And so the people who watch the news are able to start off repetitively that which reporters have said with a twinkle in their eye, hoping that the rest of America will earn their trust and see current events from their own point of view rather than actually going forward and discovering how to improve conditions and make changes themselves. 

He always bows at me as I go by him in my electric wheelchair. He is a man, one of many, who sells the “Big Issue” on the same street corner day after day. He interacts with everyone who walks by him, trying to look them in the eye and smile; often, he is able to get them to smile as well. More often than not, however, people do their best to ignore him; even changing directions to be out of his reach. His hair is longer and he has a beard the color of maple syrup as well as a jacket that says in big letters on the back “God Loves You.” In fact, in many ways it’s hard not to look at him and think of the old Sunday school pictures of Jesus with milky eyes, long hair and a beard; wanting to tell everyone that God loves each of them. It looks as if, except for the complacent eyes, this Big Issue seller could have modeled for any of those paintings from my early church days.

After nine months of driving past him, looking at my watch, sometimes managing a smile, but trying to avoid him all the same, I realized that I was being absurd. Here is an individual I saw everyday who always tried to make me smile and even more amusingly; always treated me like a queen by bowing whenever he saw me. So I stopped one morning when I could spare the time.

“This is absurd, I see you every day and I don’t know your name; what is it?”

“I’m Brian, what’s yours?”

And so, for a while, we chatted briefly, promising to call each other by name the next time our paths met (or rather I traveled down his path, depending on how you look at it).

Knowing Brian as a man named Brian, and knowing that he knows my name somehow makes the city of London seem instantly smaller. I can wave at him from across the street, or he can whistle and shout my name to get my attention. And because he looks so much like Jesus and insists that God loves everyone in this city, a city where the definition of love has been forgotten. It’s impossible not to make the connection between him and a life of faith.

Christ himself said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” in one of the most confusing texts ever written. The Beatitudes managed to tie any person regardless of religion and background in knots. At first it sounds like this man is handing out consolation prizes, “Well, you don’t get to be rich but at least you get to be blessed.” This is where some of our adamant anger against faith lies. A blessing is a lousy consolation prize when someone is starving. But what Brian illustrates is a world that we all dream of, where everyone knows everybody else’s name. Not just name, but everyone knows everyone else and can recognize the value and talents of each individual. The thought that this could ever happen in a city like London is enough to cause apoplectic fits. \Being known is much more intimate. Most of us, when we walk by Big Issue sellers or people sleeping on the street, do not directly disrespect them. But the automatic response of the diverting of eyes and the insistence of continuing walking when confronted with such individuals is ultimately the refusal to know these people and the conditions and events that have shaped them.

All of us enjoy being with people who know us, not just our names, but our likes and dislikes, qualities and characteristics, even when that other person is able to finish your sentence for you. There is a sort of relief when anyone passes a friend on the street and they stop you by name. Inevitably, it sets the rest of your day on an ecstatic level, as you recall the brief, but solid encounter of a friend chasing you down the street calling your name for everyone to hear. What we all want is a world in which people connect with us, serve each other, and recognize the need that every individual has and how he or she can help fulfill those needs. The relief comes when you know a persons name and can communicate about yourselves with each other, even if , it is a simple wave across the street.

We call them Chuggers, which is a combination of “charity” and “muggers.” They are the people who stand on the street wearing matching t-shirts and holding clipboards in an effort to get you to give them money for whatever cause they are currently representing. These people actually are not volunteers; they are outsourced. Turns out some bureaucratic genius came up with the idea of having an agency that will be willing to stand on the street and solicit donations for any cause. One day they might be collecting for starving children in Africa; the next for the Humane Society, and the next day for child refugees in Pakistan, followed that weekend by underprivileged children in India. They are not passionate about any of the issues for which they are soliciting donations. Seeking out alms to protect those in need has now become a conveyor belt of individuals able to change their opening paragraph to suit any charity at will.

Due to my electric wheelchair, for the most part I can successfully avoid Chuggers. They are always on Tottenham Court Road and I am always able to weave in and out of them with great dexterity. Today however I was not so lucky. An overly cheery blonde Chugger got in my way and asked one of the most amusing questions I have heard in a while.

“What are you doing to help children with disabilities?”

She then proceeded to specifically name my disability as what her organization is raising money for. She isn’t seeing my disability and naming it, it truly is what this organization is devoted to. I look at her; the situation is absolutely comic. One would think that I out of all people would receive a get out of jail free card as to avoiding charity markets. After all, they are supposed to be giving money to people like me not demanding it. Today I can’t resist.

“So tell me more about what it’s like to have this disability?” I ask, just testing her knowledge a little more. She is good. She has definitely memorized the pamphlet. The problem is, she is preaching to the choir, considering the fact that I’m sitting right in front of her. I can’t help but press my luck even further.

“Wow that’s awful! How do those kids even begin to cope, what a terrible situation to grow up in.”

She thinks she has me now and offers me a pen and form to write down my bank details. “I’m sorry, I can’t write”.

“You can’t write at all?” She sounds the rare combination of disappointment and surprise. This was not in her training pamphlet when she signed on to be a Chugger. “Why not?” In the UK, Chuggers cannot write down your bank details, you have to do it for them as some sort of legal privacy act. Because I can’t write down mine, she knows she is not getting a donation.

“Because I have a disability”

This explanation has never occurred to her. I have no choice at this point but to shrug my shoulders and drive away.

For most people, disabilities don’t really have a place. They don’t recognize the problems caused by having a disability until they confront someone who is fully immersed in it. We shuffle our ill and dying into homes where experts can care for them so we don’t have to face the failures of the human body which will inevitably become our own. Worse, in Western culture we seem to like it that way.

But once we get to know someone with that condition, then all of a sudden the charity name disappears entirely. It turns into the condition that “Bob” has, but he’s able to live his life anyway and make us laugh at the local pub. We don’t see the weakness of people we know even when we are standing a few feet away from them. Rather, we see them as an entire being as opposed to fragmentary conditions. This is the difference between raising money for a cause and being passionate about one. This is why I call the people who stand on the corner of Tottenham Court Road Chuggers rather than charity collectors.

As I went down the street after my encounter, I couldn’t help but think of her original question which was actually quite poignant. What am I doing to help disabled children? The best thing for kids with disabilities is to have a society which sees them not as a cause or a victim but as unique individuals capable of racing towards their dreams and being exactly who they want to be. For disabled children, the greatest gift I can give them is not from my bank account but rather, be a successful adult and refuse the easy classification as a victim in need of a specified charity. Although, maybe that’s how the overly cheery Chugger saw me. She didn’t see the disability at all until it impeded her work. Maybe all she saw was the successful adult going down the street who wanted to help in any way they can.

My cable breaks down all the time. I’ve stopped buying magazines because, quite simply, they depress me and as you already know by the first of this year I made a conscious choice not to follow the news. These three things , combined with the fact that I don’t fit into the traditional mold of what a young woman ought to be, means that most days whenever I walk through the shopping center to get to work I feel like I am on the outside looking in at the world rather than the other way around. The funny thing is, people actually can’t stand those of us who are able to watch the world go by. They want everyone to be caught up in it and whisked away in some weird combination of lust and greed. The truth is, we live in a world which craves cultural homogeny. Everyone should want what we want.

This is the point in time when my political science creature would step up and make some sort of philosophical commentary about the state of the world. The truth is you could blame capitalism for this rat race fueled by advertising and big companies wanting to sell more, thereby making the rich richer. Or you could blame socialism, fueled by an unattainable ideal that everyone would not only be equal but also the same, have the same items, want the same things, and not lack any of the same necessities. Someone could probably find a way to blame every political philosophy in the world should they want to, but it doesn’t change the fact that every single one of us wants the world to operate our way. And every single one of us thinks deep down that our way of seeing the world is the best way to do so.

We are adept at filling the silences in our mind with the sound of things which we don’t have and the craving for those things that we want. Humanity, as a whole, excels in creating idols of ourselves and being prepared to seek whatever we desire at all possible costs. The cult of homogeny means that deep down we are unable to understand why we don’t have everything we want, but also why we want these items in the first place. Furthermore it means that we cannot begin to comprehend the idea that maybe not everyone wants items such as the strongest army in the world, more wealth, more land, or simply more food. But also it means that we can’t even begin to see why anyone would see the world any different than we see it. After all, when an individual sees himself as the center of the universe, there is only one way to look at each individual object in relation to him.

Looking at the world from the outside, being unable to run around in high heeled shoes, incapable of grabbing the latest mocha frappuccino in a Starbucks cup and refusing to have any contact with the popular hysteria brought on by the news means that I do have to see the world differently. There are moments where I catch myself standing in line at a checkout counter trying to decipher the headlines on a magazine cover and having no idea what the lingo is referring to. I have to say, I might not like it when I have no idea what’s going on around me, but I do enjoy it when I don’t feel obligated to sit with the entire pasteurized culture that I am surrounded by.

I am told by my friends that sometime soon, I will have to be sucked in to what they now call the “Two Percent Culture”. That is a place where only two percent of all real people actually honestly sit in. The rest of the people skim themselves off the top or try to be caught up in a whirlwind of frenzy. But based on cultural centrifuge which somehow acts as a great equalizer, so that they too can seem to belong. But the truth is I never think I will fit in there. Moreover, I don’t think that I want to.

My cousin is trying to help me walk through his sunken living room. I am tiny and still trying to get my legs under my hips. Most days that fight is a losing battle. He is a foot taller than me and attempts to wrap his arms around me so that I won’t fall. Of course this constriction is too much for my body to bear, and I end up on the floor. My aunt comes to the rescue.

“Don’t help her too much, there is such a thing as helping someone to such an extreme degree that you wind up smothering them and doing more harm than good. Just hold her hand if she needs help walking sweetie, that’s enough.”

Fast forward twenty years and I am watching the very same words come out of a friend’s mouth. She is on TV speaking about the adoption of orphans worldwide. Programs set up by the government are failing these children right and left (it doesn’t matter which government: state government, federal government; Russian; Chinese; they all seem to not be providing for children in desperate need of homes). Individual action needs to be taken, she says this over and over. If half the churches in America would have one family that would adopt one child, we could give a home to each child in America this year. I am shocked. Just one family in half the churches in America? That’s all it would take? Really? I stare blankly at my computer screen doing the math, wondering what would happen if some churches would find three or four families that would want to adopt and fully support them. The calculations in my head are rolling and then I immediately make the leap: What if we started a government program that would take in all the orphans? There are so few of them, surely someone in Washington could come up with…

And now we’re back to the original problem that programs, it turns out, just don’t work and that children don’t need anymore programs, they need individuals willing to step up to the plate and be a family.

When there is a problem of any kind, why is it that our instinct moves immediately towards a programmatic solution, instead of individuals taking initiative? I don’t believe that most people are lazy. After all, many problems we face are so inconvenient to everybody that perceived laziness is sheer naivety. It’s that the lazy solution turns into a much more complicated problem.

Living here in the U.K, I am often struck by how many individuals consider money as a form of charity. Is that it? Is it simply that we feel we are doing something by throwing money at a problem? Government money, our money? But do we really think a simple check can solve all of our problems? In this way of course, writing a check or forming a large program which we support financially but take little direct action in sometimes doesn’t do a whole lot but line the pockets of bureaucrats.

It’s easy to talk about improving the world in comfortable leather armchairs when we have our noses behind thick books and talking about items such as programs in theory. But money, although it has a great deal of power, is also hugely impotent. If you literally were to just throw money at a problem nothing would happen except that there would be a pile of money on top of the problem. A problem with a large amount of financial pools never gets to the core of an issue, changing the hearts and minds of people. It always takes individuals doing something directly, whether it comes from using money appropriately or taking some sort of physical response in order to find a solution. And what are the chances that members of a government who meet behind closed doors and drive Mercedes actually know how to solve a problem when they have never faced it themselves? Not very likely. The fact is my aunt was right. Mothering a problem is not the same as solving it; it just suffocates those who have fallen underneath and are already suffering to begin with.

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” –James Madison

The 188 pulls up to my stop and lowers its ramp. The nervousness in my stomach disappears for the time being and I am momentarily at ease. In my experience there is about a fifteen percent failure rate of bus ramps not opening up. Now I just have to worry about the bus ramp opening up when I want to get off.

“It sure was nice of them to put those ramps on buses so you can use them wasn’t it,” a little old Irish lady says to me. Nice? No, actually, it isn’t nice. It is the law. When people with disabilities chained themselves to buses as a form of protest, it took years for the lawmakers to take action. It wasn’t until five years ago that all buses were required to have ramp access before leaving the depot. And even with that rule in effect, I still can’t get on a bus a large percent of the time. Call the accessible transit situation in London frustrating, hellish, difficult, or even unfair if you’d like. But you cannot call it “nice.”

I’m always a bit bewildered by people on either side of the Atlantic who insist that disability legislation is something nice for lawmakers to come up with. I’m with Madison on this one, it is not the role of the government to be charitable or nice. Establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty and well as promoting the fact that all men are created equal is not merely something “nice” to do. One is baffled why the subject of disability rights is seen as an as issues hand-outs rather than justice.

President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock High School to escort nine African American children into having the same education as their white peers. We do not look back on that event and say that Eisenhower was being “nice.” We do not give women the right to vote because it is a matter of social grace. Nor should we promote equal access to public transportation because it can act as a form of alms. Perhaps it is a statement about our society’s views of individuals with physical limitations that we choose to see such issues of inaccessibility as a form of inconvenience rather than social injustice.

The bus stops in Russell Square when myself and the woman alight. I again feel a sense of relief once I reach the pavement and turn to get to my appointment, smiling at the woman out of trained politeness. Looking behind me I see her walking away slowly, dependent on her wooden cane. I can’t help but wonder, as her body becomes increasingly uncooperative with age, if notices that her world is shrinking as well. Perhaps she doesn’t even realize that growing older and loosing stamina shouldn’t result in a smaller world.

Recently, my friends in the UK have been inundating me with horror stories about health care workers taking anything but a patient’s best interest in mind. Yes, I realize that malpractice occurs in America too, and no, this isn’t another health care reform article. My conversations relating the experiences of my mainly able-bodied friends began to make me think about how we, as a society, treat not simply ”the disabled,” but simply the sick, the injured, and the aged as well. Its something even the “experts” can’t seem to get right.

If the mark of how advanced a civilization is how much we have evolved away from barbarism, then surely one definitive measurement of this progress is how we treat the most vulnerable in our society. This, of course includes not only the smallest and the most impoverished but also those whose bodies have turned against them due to either time or condition. And yet, even in our modern age, this level of civility is a standard that has yet to be reached in all but the most exceptional of cases.

This breach of advancement becomes even more despicable when one considers that a breakdown of the human body, in one form or another, is inevitable in all of us. By ignoring or disgracing those whom this breakdown has already occurred in,

what exactly are we trying to accomplish? Perhaps it is that we are afraid to acknowledge that human frailty is everyone’s fate, and the feebleness, the pain, which we see in the eyes of the man lying in front of us from his bed will someday be our own. When we are all faced with our own vulnerabilities, it is within our prideful nature to behave in the worst way possible, particularly when it is embodied not within ourselves but someone else. And so, we go on creating a world which will surly be unprepared for even our weakest days.

For decades, we have made health and caring for those in need of physical help an issue of politics rather than an issue of humanity. Even if we did have universal healthcare throughout the solar system, it does little to care for people in imperfect health outside of an institution. In this way, would the world outside of hospitals and urgent care center be fairer, or would it simply be cheaper to institutionalize the frail who inconvenience us to be dogmatically watched after? If we mean to fix all our health related issues with improving our respect for the frailty of the human condition, both the politicians and the doctors have fooled us into we our much more evolved simply by keeping our weaknesses out of sight.

Of course the words ‘integration’ and ‘rehabilitation’ are words that we hear those dressed up as reformers on the news shows spout out as well, but there are little visible effects of an attempt to improve the quality of life for individuals who don’t have the most cooperative body. Even the most compassionate health care which costs nothing cannot alter the fact that even today, even in the richest and arguably the most advanced and compassionate nations in the world, some schools still refuse to open their doors to disabled children and architects choose to put steps rather than ramps outside of new buildings because the former “looks more traditional.” This says nothing about the countless small issues of discrimination and even hatefulness that occur at the checkout lines or railway platforms.

If we consider ourselves an advanced society we are grossly mistaken. If we think any sort of government act will force us into being more progressive or charitable, we are lying to each other. Those are the changes to a culture which cannot take place by asking doctors to see more people or even handing complicated issues over to experts so we can keep our hands clean. We do a terrible job taking care of people who we find inconvenient in life specifically because we have built a world where their life is inconvenient. But all to often, by the time we realize how inconvenient the human condition actually is, is the time we’ve succumbed to it ourselves.

Last night I became engrossed in a debate with a fellow American about whether or not it was appropriate for us to bow when meeting the Queen of England… should we ever do so. Her argument was that it is British custom bow and “when in Rome…” The problem is, there is a difference between following cultural custom because you are a guest and completing an act of submission, which is what the bow symbolized originally.

I’m not going to talk about the point of the American Revolution and the preamble of the Constitution ensuring that Americans bow to no one. Such an argument is quickly, even if irrationally, dismissed in a postmodern world. But I do want to challenge the argument that people give: Americans should bow to the Queen as a sign of respect?.

Respect for what exactly?

If it’s respect for the culture, this is a shaky argument to say the least. I’ve never walked down Tottenham Court Road and seen one man bow to another. Unlike the Japanese, Brits are not normally the bowing type these days contrary to what you may read in fairy tales. That’s why businessmen bow when they are over in the Tokyo office. This is not a bow I have a problem with.

So then, why do British people bow to the Queen? Simply put, because she is their queen. They do not bow to their prime minister or any other member of their government. They bow to no other foreign regent but their own; British people don’t bow to the king of Saudi Arabia because he is not their sovereign. And likewise, Queen Elizabeth is not ours.

You will now no doubt say, “you should respect a world leader.” I will never disagree with this. But since when does showing respect to people mean bowing to them simply because they wear a crown on their heads. For that matter, what makes her a world leader? She was born into a regal position, this is very true, and so were many world leaders. One might even very well argue the same about a wealthy man born into his privileged position. But by being a leader it is inherent the one leads. According to most of my friends here in the UK, the only leadership activity she undertakes is putting on the crown.

I bow to no one except to God. The American Constitution and my own faith are far too engrained in me to even consider doing otherwise. Some might call it fanaticism, others can call it arrogance. But I personally think no one should be obliged to bow down to another person, ever. If we are all made of the same stuff, if we are all equal as people and as cultures, why should a title be acknowledged at all, let alone with an act which historically signifies acquiescence. You are still fearfully and wonderfully made, even in a place as sophisticated as Rome.

I’ve been told there was recently a horrific earthquake in Haiti. My pastor tells me the president’s approval ratings are at fifty percent. Evidently there’s been a change over in congress. Supposedly Google and China are at odds. Oh and Johnny Depp is dead (I read that one on Twitter… it wound up being a hoax).

Other than that I have no idea what’s going on in the world. I haven’t turned on the news, listened to my favorite talk radio station, or opened a paper since New Year’s Eve. This was the resolution I made for myself. And so, what I know of the world I get in snippets: the boldface overly dramatic Evening Standard sign, conversations with friends, a headline I happen to see from the paper the man opposite me on the tube is holding or a dubious Twitter feed. There are no images of mass graves coming into my home while I’m eating dinner. I haven’t seen a lying politician for months. And my blood pressure has probably dropped.

This year long experiment has already changed my worldview in so many ways. I can no longer assume myself to be the most jaded one at a cocktail party as every piece of news hits me fresh. I listen to other people and their opinions more, because I cannot offer my own. And once I hear of an incident, it is the principles rather than the particulars which I am left to think about.

But my favorite effect of not watching the news is I see the things in front of me much more clearly. With the extra time I now have, I’ve made an effort to spend it with the people who surround me in daily life. The truth is, everyone’s life is so dramatic that each person could be their own news show. If broadcasts are supposed to inform us about the events that shape our world, why do we not respond with the same amount of passion when our friend finds out that her husband is having an affair as we do when we hear about a politician doing the same to his wife. How can I honestly say I feel pain for people who lost their homes in a natural disaster, when I don’t even bother to understand why a man outside Waterloo Station has lost his?

I’m not even saying ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ and everything will be fine. The truth is I don’t like the idea of being nice for niceness sake, it becomes another excuse for legalism. I think western society’s obsession with the news can be another form of this devotion to the standards of society. We appear to care about the world around us while not actually looking at the issues close to home. It’s like driving in the desert; everyone is looking at the mountains, which are miles away, wondering how the people there can live in such harsh conditions. We almost marvel at the drama of it. What we miss are the folks who we drive past that desperately need a cup of water. Perhaps we are even on our way to help the folks on the mountainside ourselves. But while this is admirable, we aren’t anywhere close to our destination. The fact is, when can’t even get where we think help needs to be without looking around and seeing first where we are.

I sat across from the occupational therapist, going through his checklist and asking the standard questions. It was my last visit to the therapy center I had attended for 16 years. She was going through what she called the “release documents” which was to say that I was leaving the center, never to be a client again. “How have you improved in your independence since coming to this institution? Are you now able to live a fully independent life?” It was a ridiculous question on several levels. First of all I was approximately 9 months old when I first started going to therapy at the clinic. I would hope I had improved from a baby who could not sit up by herself in the past 16 years. But to further complicate the situation the therapist was asking for a definite answer to a rather nebulous question.

Do I live a fully independent life?

What the heck does that mean, “fully independent?” There are plenty of able-bodied people who aren’t at all “fully independent.” There’s the girl who is in a co-dependent relationship with her boyfriend and can’t leave him at any price. There’s the man who lacks self-confidence and therefore relies on his wife to make the decisions that he cannot take initiative for. Co-dependency is everywhere. What about the woman who can’t shovel her driveway when it’s full of snow, or calls her daughter every time the DVD player starts flashing 12:00?

In our society today, we’re not just dependent on people. Stuff ties us down and paralyzes us in an extreme way that most of us don’t recognize. SO often I hear, “I can’t go anywhere without my pillow,” or, “I don’t want to be away from wi-fi for longer than 3 hours. I need to know what’s going on.” The comforts of the home which we insist on are in their own way a confirmation of our dependency on things outside of ourselves. They tie us down, make it difficult to move at a moment’s notice, and close options and opportunities that might occur yet ask us to travel away from our home with all the comfortable stuff.

A good friend of mine is a philosophy professor up in Leeds and she asked me one day why I seemed to have this obsession with independence. According to her, none of us are independent. We can’t survive on our own. We need to go the grocery store and buy flour made by some farmer we’ve never even laid eyes on. I guess it depends on how you define independence more than anything. The word “depend” actually comes from an old Latin and French root meaning “to hang.” Properly defined by the dictionary, depend on or depend upon means “to be controlled or determined by.” Maybe it’s just the way I was brought up, but I can’t help but see the connection between being controlled and hanging oneself at the end of a rope. If the French root of the word is indeed “to hang” it quickly explains my fear of dependency. You are tying yourself to something that will inevitably not allow you to go as far as you want and much like a dog on a leash, eventually the choke collar will nip into your neck.

If we look at where the word comes from and the violent as well as suspenseful image of being controlled, we begin to wonder if independence means not being at the end of a leash. Maybe it’s about knowing that you have options to change your life and live how you would like it to be rather than living a life completely self sufficient? I can’t make my own breakfast or tie my own shoes. If you define independent in this way, my occupational therapist was a failure in her goal of helping me work towards independent living. But if it’s about having options and being able to control your life, seeking help if one method fails you and having the confidence that you will survive one way or the other, then I am independent. I have succeeded in being the driver of my life, being able to take it where I want to go, and ensure that I can meet my goals and dreams. Oddly enough I don’t feel independent during the hours I spend alone, even if I’m able to complete any task I want to. I feel the most independent when my front door revolves with people offering suggestions, borrowing a cup of flour, insisting that we live in a community where we value each other, help each other, and encourage each other to go as far as we possibly can.