Never Walked In High Heels

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.

Not long ago I sent out an email asking for help regarding a dilemma I was facing. Most people emailed me back offering suggestions or saying that they were stumped, except for one woman who was in my masters program last year. She wrote me the following:

“I can appreciate what you are going to do, but it’s only going to result in costing you more money. You’re better off quitting while you are ahead. After all, you can’t change the world, so why do damage to yourself while trying?”

I realize, of course, that no single person can change the world. Indeed it is arrogant to think otherwise. The economic philosopher F.A Hayek once wrote “Nothing has brought as much hell on earth as people trying to make it a paradise.” And indeed, my generation is particularly culpable of running around attempting to justify the action(s) of that behavior by persuading ourselves that if only this one thing was different the world would be exactly as it ought to be.

But I can save someone’s world, even if it is my own. By nature, I am not particularly a small-scale thinker. When most people in college were volunteering to teach a single school child how to read, I quickly found myself working in three different ESL classrooms. The truth is I was never very effective in any of them because I was spread out so thin

.

This, I suppose, is the deity of human interaction, because to change the world simply means to change the world of one individual. Simply teaching a child how to do long division radically changes his world. And when that individual’s world has changed, he is able to press on and teach someone else the same skills which you have taught him. Thus you have greatly altered not the child’s world, but those he taught as well.

Metaphysics talks about a problem which is briefly titled “Possible Worlds”. The idea, though somewhat strange, is rather simple. In this world, my nail polish is bright red, but there are a million possible worlds out there which we may or may not be aware of in which my polish is bright green, purple, orange, or even black. Simply because we are not aware of these possible worlds in our own world does not mean that a world where I have chosen to paint my nails black, does not exist. It just means that in this world, we are not aware of it. When we take the time to touch each other’s lives, and to improve the world that we are aware of, we give each other glimpses of what better worlds, that is what possible worlds, are out there.

The family of a girlfriend of mine decided over the course of about ten years to adopt eight Russian children, all of them related in various forms. When I tell this story, particularly to people in the UK, I often get a comment that my friend’s family “over-adopted” and thus most likely spread themselves so thin that they will never be able to take care of all of those children adequately. It’s true, those children will not have as much individualized attention from their parents as an only child living under the same conditions. I was appalled when someone said “What are they trying to do, adopt all of Russia? Change the entire problem? The entire orphan problem?” No family in their right mind is ever that arrogant.

What they did try to do was change the world for eight Russian children who would otherwise be facing a bleak existence separated from their siblings in orphanages spread out across a massive country. And the parents themselves say that as much they managed to changed the world for their children. But their children have enhanced their world. That’s the way that great ideas work. Someone who improves the world of someone else in need will surely become the recipient of a changed world. And, unlike my friend who insists otherwise, perhaps will so much easier say that worlds, when looked at on an individual level, are much easier to say than we might think.

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.

From the moment I laid eyes on him I was stuck by how much the illness had ravaged his body. I had grown up in a place where I had seen my share of AIDS victims, or so I thought. But the ones I had seen, leaning their partner’s arm at an evening benefit for the local charity, was nothing compared to how ill he was. As he sat up in bed I wondered where the rest of him was. Then I realized his legs were still under the blanket. They were just so small that it looked as if nothing was there.

I don’t remember his name at all, which is funny because I swore to myself that I would always remember sitting on his bed. During my time at university, I volunteered to visit individuals who were struggling with the final stages of AIDS. South of the Mason Dixon line, this meant many of those we visited had been abandoned by their families. This is not to say that none of these people had loved ones who regularly visited the ward, but many did not. Given my age, my mother had to explain to me later just how terrifying the HIV epidemic was and the stigma which still remained.

“Don’t you know I’m… gay?” the last word wasn’t even whispered- it was mouthed. I nodded and kept asking him questions about the horses he used to train before he became ill. No matter how sick people are, it’s always stories which provide the most targeted anesthetic. In this case he was telling me about himself, what he did and who he used to be. He didn’t spend his whole life in this bed being nearly invisible, he was someone. And then he went and did something very strange.

“Your shoe is untied.”

“Wha-… oh yeah. I can’t tie my own shoes. Fortunately I don’t really walk much so-“

“Will you let me tie it for you?”

To say I was taken aback would be putting it to moderately. I was shocked. Can you get your shoes tied by a dying man? Was there precedent for this? I hesitated, not wanting him to lose any more of his precious energy.

“Please. I’m a very good shoe tying kind of guy.” I nodded and moved my foot to where he could reach my shoe, his transparent fingers working the magic it takes to tie a shoe, the motions of which I still cannot comprehend. He did it deftly, as every adult I know does. In a flash, he was finished a simple double knot remained which was tied with such determination that it would take my friend seven minutes to undo that evening.

I am here. Even though I am ill, I lived. I am somebody.

Six years later and I still think of him almost every time someone ties my shoes. Within a month he had left his body and someone else had taken his place in his bed. Long after his name was gone from my mind the stories of who he was and the actions of what he did that winter night stay with me. He was a man who desired, like all of us really, to be known and loved rather than to be immortal. Even in our weakest moments we want to touch, interact , and even to serve in order to confirm that our existence will be snuffed out long after the breath has left the body.

In his case, I think that for the rest my life, his existence will keep burning.

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 see it all the time, particularly in older couples, but the truth is, despite what I would like to think, most of my married friends are headed to it too. Couples get to a point where they just miss each other. One person attempts to show love and the other person doesn’t realize it, or it doesn’t come in the form that she is expecting, and so she complains that he doesn’t love her at all. Likewise, she didn’t to anything that he thought ought to be done. And so they miss each other again. Both of them are attempting their best to show the other all the love in the world. And yet there is no (…luck?)

Dr. Gary Chapman writes in his book that there are 5 basic love languages. We have a primary love language, and then a secondary one, a way we show love, and a way we automatically receive love. Briefly they are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, encouraging words, and the giving of physical gifts. For me, the hardest love language to accept has always been the idea that acts of service communicate a form of love. When you’re disabled and always needing help, it becomes customary to constantly have individuals help you. It’s just what needs to be done and so you assume that every ramp somebody builds with their own hands, or every tire they change, is simply done out of necessity rather than love.

One of my favorite moments in the movie Anne of Green Gables is when Marilla tells Anne, “Anne, you have tricked something out of that imagination of yours that you call romance. Have you forgotten how he gave up the Avonlea school for you so that you could stay here with me? He picked you up every day in his carriage so that you could study your courses together. Don’t toss it away for some ridiculous ideal of romance that doesn’t exist.” I know I have myself been guilty of that exact fault. Missing the love of many people who are directly in front of me who love me because they do not look how I think suitors or adorers should look and act. If he doesn’t hug me, and yet he spends 8 hours on a Saturday trying to fix the electric door opener on my backdoor, should the physical touch be taken as a more suitable or a more devoted act of love than the quality of service?

One need only to open a book or switch on a TV to get a rather absurd ideal of what love ought to look like. He brings you a dozen roses to say I’m sorry but yet refuses to change his ways. She completely blows your mind and yet refuses to respect your parents, insulting them and driving a wedge between you and the two people who love you most. If everybody is different and unique, surely the way they express love is as unique to them as their own voice, or their own way of moving. And if we owe it to everyone to try to understand their background and where they are coming from, perhaps we also owe it to them to try to understand their expressions of love, their natural expressions of love, rather than complaining that they don’t suit our ideal.

Love is actually surprisingly easy to miss and it is simpler to assume it isn’t there when it doesn’t take the form we desire to see. Over and over I hear, “look for ways to love your neighbor.” That’s important and crucial. But are we also looking for ways in which other people show their love for us, even if it’s not necessarily in the form we expect?

There’s a homeless man outside of Waterloo Station. There’s always a homeless man outside of Waterloo Station, and I didn’t think today would be any exception. The biting cold whips around the coats and scarves of myself and my companion. She is older, considers herself a hippie and only wears natural fibers that are organically grown. Her hair turns silver a little more each day adding to the image of wisdom and magic she already exudes. By the time she was my age she was already taking place in college protests demanding peace and equal treatment around the world. I respect her for her passionate views on humanity and her liberal amounts of love.

The homeless guy spots us and smiles, reaching out his Costa cup that has been torn in half and begins asking us for money. My friend holds on to my arm tighter and urges us to keep walking even though I hesitate and slow down to look him in the eye. I smile, shake my head and walk on. “Keep walking. We have a government that can take care of him better than we can. We’re not experts in his condition and problems.”

I’m confused by her statement. Why do we assume, all over the world, that the government will take care of people in need? That the government can make all of the problems disappear? That someday there will be no poverty and no homeless if only we had the right set of social institutions and collective practices? We all have some idea that if just our party, our guy, our religion, our class, our race got into office somehow, that everything would better. And we lie to ourselves about this every election year.

Most people think that my political views don’t include things like charity or giving the little guy a chance. They assume that I’m highly liberal or highly conservative, fitting into one of the extreme poles of the situation. More often than not people say that I don’t care or I’m selfish because I don’t fit with their ideologies about what human rights are or what charity is. That’s simply not true. I believe that human rights are better described as human responsibilities and we as individuals have responsibilities to everyone else, to make sure they can and will achieve the highest standards they can possibly reach. This does mean taking action at an individual level rather than waiting for someone in Washington D.C. or Parliament to agree with us and letting them take it from there. I’m afraid that it is our nature to assume that just because a government has a program somewhere, everything is ok and it is reaching the people that it needs to. I see this all the time in America. People assuming that just because there is a law against disability discrimination that it never happens, this simply isn’t the case. Governments cannot pinpoint specific problems the way we can as individuals, and so saying it should be everyone’s responsibility is essentially saying it never will be anyone’s responsibility. Like everything else, responsibility and the enforcement of justice gets diffused so that nobody feels that they can toe the line alone.

I know I probably pass by too many people in need on the street, not just the ones crouching in the shadowed doorways trying to keep warm, but the ones who need help in my own neighborhood, who have a home and food on the table, but are desperate for so many other things. I assume when I see them living their lives independently and unobstructed by a set of stairs, I assume everything is ok and everything is provided for simply because they have two hands and two legs that work. And to some extent I need to do this in order to get anything done in my life and in order to fight for justice and expand the borderlands of creativity (my two objectives while I’m on this planet). I can’t spend every single night taking people to churches and shelters ensuring that they get help, when I need help myself so much of the time, but I also know that things put in my path, regardless of if they’re directed towards me or just in the obscure corners of my field of vision, they are there, in whatever form it may be, whether it be a physical obstacle or the fellow human in need, to be aware of and to face. And while I might not be able to do anything for him in that moment, knowing he exists, knowing that the situation, the condition of life exists, means that someday, when I am in a position to do so, I may be able to advocate for him, having never seen him again. In this way, it is my duty to acknowledge the injustices, if anything, to stay grounded in reality.

In one of my favorite books, the hero tells his love interest, “nobody gets anywhere by denying reality.” I think of this often, the second I try to avoid uncomfortable conversation or pretend that everything is fine. I’m in the car with my mother and we are discussing this book. The conversation soon turns to the difference between lying to oneself rather than lying to others. Two different categories of sins, in my opinion. The latter we all know is wrong. But the former?  How does one begin to lie to oneself, if he knows reality to begin with?

But we do exactly that. We all hate certain aspects of our lives, our relationships, much preferring to push those into a corner and soothe ourselves, rather than face what are seemingly minor problems full on. I never really understood what lying to yourself meant, until last semester when I was faced with conditions in my home that I really didn’t want to see. However, in my small two-bedroom flat, there was very few options to get away from person problems. What insisting on not lying to yourself actually means is that you have to see what is directly in front of you.

In acting, we call it living in the moment, which sounds easy, but is extremely difficult if not next to impossible to accomplish, both onstage and in reality. It’s better to understand what it means in life by first understanding what it means in acting. Briefly, it means that while an actor is onstage, he cannot be thinking about how he delivered the last line or how he will deliver the next. He can’t be thinking about what he left inside his dressing room or the technical difficulties that arise in the next scene. He has to be listening, in only the matter of the moment. He has no idea what will come next, no idea how the play will end, and at this point in time it doesn’t matter. He only needs to accomplish what has to be done now.

This is not to say that the actor denies planning ahead. Indeed every option that is offered to him by other characters, he must consider the possible outcomes of. But it does mean that nothing exists beyond what is on the stage.

In life, problems resemble a cancer. The more you ignore them or fear them, the bigger they grow. Oddly enough, if you obsess over a problem, the same thing happens. It’s a sort of ontological joke. That is, if you don’t imagine a successful outcome to begin with, if you don’t envision your cancer actually getting smaller, chances are greatly lessened that you will ever make a full recovery. So you must first get diagnosed and then take action accordingly. But denying that there is a problem and denying that there is a solution is ultimately practicing a form of escapism in your own life.

Emily, in the play “Our Town,” says it best when she questions whether anyone ever appreciates a single moment that they live in. According to the stage manager no one but poets and saints are able to even begin to do that. What’s in front of us on a daily basis is without a doubt highly overwhelming. Even looking at a chair and thinking about all the actions and reactions that are going on within the world of that chair on the subatomic level is enough to make your head spin. But, to then try to plot and plan what may or may not happen a month, year, or even a week down the road is biting off more than anyone can chew. All that we have control of is here, now, and barely that. No amount of lying in order to make oneself feel better, safer, and more at ease, will change what actually may and will happen.

Having a disability helps master this task to some degree. You have good days, and you have bad days. Days when you literally can climb a mountain, and days when you fall out of bed. On the good days, you know that there are bad days coming, you’re not suddenly going to be healed and have that be that, but you also know that you have to enjoy a good day when it comes. Going outside for a walk that lasts a little longer. And on the bad days, it means that you can’t go any further before you figure out how to, quite literally, unlock the door in front of you when your hand is shaking from spasms. And then, after you unlock the front door, you figure out what the next step is. And then the next. And then the next…

It’s Armistice Day again. It is the time when we all wear red poppies for remembrance and flower sellers on the street corner are doing a respectful duty. The scarlet plastic flowers contrasting against our dark coats are a bold statement for the good that men are capable of in the bleakest times. And these men, wars, and efforts, are worth being revered as well as remembered because these are the people who knew that sometimes a war is worth fighting, in order to protect human dignity.

Sadly, we as a society seem unable to offer these people the same respect in peace time as they did on the battlefield. Indeed, it is a known fact that with war comes wounds, and with those often comes permanent disability. What is often forgotten is that even today, with the onset of disability, basic human rights and dignities are habitually forgotten, looked over, or ignored. It suddenly becomes socially acceptable for a taxi to blow past a man in a wheelchair because the driver cannot be bothered to put the ramp down. Store clerks refuse to acknowledge someone with inarticulate speech because it is easier to talk to her companion. And a family stops trying to bathe the last living man from the World War II generation because his missing limb combined with his age related conditions makes showering extremely difficult.

Veterans are the people who were willing to risk life and limb to protect our safety and way of life at home. What they did not realize they were risking, was what is taken away as a person with any disability… their dignity.

With disability rights legislation several years old, it would be easy to assume that such discrimination and humiliation no longer exists or, at the very least, is on its way out. But in fact, the issue is a civil rights battle with extremely uncharted waters. The Disability Rights Commission recently revealed that a shocking number of organizations failed to give a disability equality scheme on the required date. Research shows that over forty percent of disabled people are deemed “economically inactive.” Despite all possible legislation, the barriers which were an issue for disabled people fifteen years ago have not been erased but rather transformed. And for the man who gave up his pristine spine because he believed an ideal was worth that risk to protect that notion, why can’t the country he was willing to enlist for now see him as a man who is as deserving to be able to get into any building as he is.

If this sounds absurd then there is only one word I can say in response… good. It is absurd that anyone is one faulty stoplight away from becoming a second-class citizen. Moreover, the fact that our culture emphasizes perfection and convenience symbolizes our refusal to acknowledge the frailty of the entire human condition. If the Armed Forces can see this need for the protection of humanity, why is it those at home refuse to recognize the same need for dignity for injured vets.

As a disabled woman, I recognize that laws and legislation have their place in forcing social change. But, it is people who make the laws, and it is people who make changes, or impede them. All of the laws and constitutions amount to good intentions on the part of lawmaker, but the conditions for disabled persons remain unchanged in daily life. And such changes will not be until changes in perception occur at an individual level. It is indeed inappropriate for anyone to excuse his ignorant behavior by explaining “I have yet to receive training on how to deal with disabled people.” Moreover, it is wrong. To use such a feeble defense is to ultimately give permission to someone else to treat you in the same manner when you are old and have unsure footing. More than any other civil rights battle, this issue is the one where, given time, you are sure to reap the seeds you sow.

Of course it is not only veterans who are entitled to these rights, but for them the common condition of the disabled person should strike you as the most shameful. These men and women became disabled by protecting you, your way of life and your home, because they thought your freedoms were worth pain, fear, and even a lifetime of inconvenience. Why can we not take the same challenge on our local high streets? What should be our selfless heroes are currently force to drink from the pungent cup of dependency feeling unwelcome, foreign, and a burden. They have been forced into the position, like all disabled people, of a refugee with no homeland even among the nation they fought to protect.

In university I would debate with my friend Mark about gender roles endlessly. Neither of us really fit into the common classifications for our sex. I was the one who was always looking for logic and reason, numbers and proofs. He was always ready to live by faith. When I would come home from four AM crew practice I would see him piling flowers into his car for the nursing home he volunteered at.We would drive by and I would honk the horn, making him slam his head on the top of the car before he looked out and waved at me. By that time, I was already to our dorm with my sweaty shirt stripped of and showing my sports bra.

From first hand experience I can say he was the best feeder on campus, and when in our junior year an incoming male freshman had a severe disability, Mark was first in line to offer to be a care taker. That’s what made me think of him this weekend.

While on a flight home I saw a family with an older son with cerebral palsy. Given that the son looked about eighteen years old I wasn’t surprised to see his father carry him on-board. But then for the next eleven hours it was the men of the family (particularly his father) which never left his side, helping him eat, adjust his iPod, or help him to the toilet.

Now maybe this behavior doesn’t seem odd to you, if not…then you are, admittedly, a much more progressive person than I am. Even though I have been lucky enough to have a wonderful relationship with my dad, growing up it is the mothers who I have always seen take their children to therapy, making the sacrifices needed to make sure her disabled child gets proper care.

What is it about a male taking care of someone else that doesn’t seem effeminate or out of place? If the qualities of nurturing and giving peace are qualities which we usually attribute to women, why do I look to the men of my life who offer the same gifts as the most masculine men I know? My mother often speaks of the male nurses she worked amongst with more reverence than any doctor. Their ability to lift fallen patients, provide calm in emergencies, and work the least desirable shifts have always shaped my image of what a man ought to be.

If a man is made by his strength, then his efforts and put others before himself is an act full of effort. If it is  muscle which is the defining characteristic of masculinity, then that muscle is only worth its use to serve others. And if it is gentleness that is somehow a feminine quality, undesirable by ‘real men,’ perhaps it is because the power which it takes to be gentle and supportive requires a unique combination which is beyond the reach of most every man.

Like so many other qualities, the most masculine thing is a man who never needs to question his masculinity. Because giving someone relief takes the same form of building a house or clearing a forest. It takes seeing what needs to be done, doing it, and not expecting anything in return.

I always thought Mark and I made a good team because he and I balanced each other out. I thought I was the male to his female. Now that I miss him, I’ve reevaluated my judgment. He is one of the best men I know as his particular brand of masculinity is one that made football players look sheepish as they ran by us on the quad.

On the rare days that I have the balance to walk, I choose to do so barefoot, even if it means that I compromise my stability in the process.  Grant you, those days are exceedingly rare and when they do come, I am like a child again, constantly making discoveries that my peers have forgotten long ago. I was 18 when I first felt the morning dew from the grass on the bottom of my feet. I was walking across a freshly mowed field in the foothills of North Carolina, a friend on each side, when the crystal drops kissed my feet. Each little drop held an entire universe of color and science as it baptized my feet with the fresh water of the new morning haze. 

Two years later, I found myself walking along the southern beaches of the Carolinas, again firmly supported by two more friends. Never before had my feet sank into the sand, been covered by a compound so vast, or felt the entire earth move beneath my feet. I had no sense of the ground I was walking on, what crevasse the sand and splinters would next inhabit my foot, and everything beneath my step was alive. The shells, the critters, everything that the ocean pulled in was full of vibrant life compared to everything I felt on my sole. Walking barefoot connected me to the rest of all that was in existence rather than that same mettle plate that held my feet day in and day out. When I did not walk, what I felt beneath my feet was only the same five inches of steel day after day. 

And so, when I stood to feel the life beneath my feet, the new discoveries were made with two other souls by my side holding me up from the ground. Souls who had felt the life move beneath their feet when they were still stumbling to walk neglected their discoveries now. It was a period of their life which had passed long ago and they had long since forgotten. But now, they were serving me by walking me across such an unknown landscape, not just helping me get my destination, but unknowingly allowing me to explore a new corner of a complex life. To the people walking beside me, it was the place I was trying to get to that was the important service. Any new discoveries I made along the way were side effects.

Often I think when people look at me, they see an opportunity to serve, to have a good deed done for the day. While I do need more help than most, my independence is all the more valuable to me when it comes to the very limited amount of things that I can do.  Many of my friends call it stubborn when I try for 20 minutes to open a can of soda or put on a jacket, but it’s so much more for me than that. Every mundane accomplishment is a declaration that I am here, that my actions are strong and that I am still a force moving and shaping this chaotic place. Reduce me to someone merely to be served and I am worthless except when it comes time for you to feel good about yourself. 

And yet. as an individual of faith, I am bound to appreciate my fellow man and the offering of service he renders. To serve another is to knit me together with my fellow man in an offering to the transcendent truth that is merciful to us all, or so they say from the pulpit. But I, in my frail humanity, am often considered one to be served rather than offer service to another. I sit in the simple wooden pew and even in the silence feel the questions boar inside my skull from the rest of the congregation.  Now I feel connected to all around me only because 10,000 inquisitions bounce around in my head from being trapped inside like a thoughtful superball. Should I? How much pain? How long? What can I do to help? The answer: I’m fine. I got here by myself, didn’t I? 

However, let me challenge you for just a moment in a way that drives the Western world mad: let me serve you. I am not just someone to be served when I need it and when it is convenient to you. I do not only exist at Christmas or when the charity bucket gets hung up for donations outside some Wal-mart chain. Therein lies the true shame of it all… here is the true tragedy of disability, if you will: Are we not all equal? And as equals are we not required to pull our own weight so that not only do you feed me dinner because I need to eat but then, I can hold your head when you’re fighting from going under. My hands still work, my heart is not yet at peace, and my heart yearns to shape this world as much as yours does. I want to shape the ground that my feet walk upon. 

A few weeks ago, we held a foot washing ceremony during the worship service I go to every Thursday night. The service is simple in that Calvinist sort of way that only can come with years of struggling with calloused hands and aching muscles. The feeling and optimism come from hard work and from biting into the impossible while trying to swallow the world whole. The sanctuary is dimly lit by flickering candles reflecting against the whitewashed walls and simple oak pews. Our water basins are not made of glass or silver, just sturdy plastic so that the containers can have a myriad of unexpected uses. The towels we use are old and have seen everything from rainy days and the bottom of muddy boots to hot pans from an oven. The tools are meager, but like so many things in life, the more meager something is, the better it feeds your insides. 

The Christian tradition of foot washing is one of my favorite actions. It’s not a ritual, requirement, or even retribution. It’s just a form of service taken from the ancient days when everything that was in the world (rocky, soft, or just plain disgusting) touched the bottoms of a man’s feet. For me, that’s the tenderest area of body, mainly from years of inexperience.  However, when a host did not wash the feet of his guests, that was a sign not only of dirty floors but of a hard heart, as well. 

I dipped my feet in the warm water and prepared to lift them up by request. I looked at yet another friend who had gotten me up countless mornings, fed me a multitude of meals and caught me from falling both physically and emotionally. Without thinking, I got out of the tub and knelt beside her, every bone of my foot pressing into the wooden floor. I did not worry about splinters or even sores in my feet, I only wanted her to know that she was loved. The warm waters of the bucket felt more soothing on my hands than it did on my feet. Though I felt that every eye in the room was watching me, I did not mind that I was feeling such discomfort. I knew I had not completed the act of washing her feet because I wanted everyone to see what a stellar servant I was; I did not mean to get on the floor for my own comfort, because if it was up to me I would be doing it in a closet. I washed her feet to understand her life, her way of traveling the world, and the places her feet had taken her that mine had not.