self-worth

Who We Are When Life is Good

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How much does society love talking about the impact of adversity on disabled people? The polishing powers of struggle, turning us all into sparkling gems? The motivation that comes from being told we’ll never be good enough, never measure up, never prosper? The myriad obstacles we’ve ‘overcome’ to be the people we are?

As a person with multiple disabilities, I can tell you with confidence that we love it a whole lot.

We love talking about it so much that you’ll rarely hear about anything else. Stories featuring disabled people centre around their troubles and barriers and the Debbie downers who insisted they’d never succeed. Disabled people are forever prompted: Tell us about the haters. The doubters. The people and institutions that stood in your way. Did all that negativity make you work harder? Did it make you stronger? Was it the driving force behind all your ‘inspirational’ achievements? Less often are we asked about positive sources of strength and power.

Societal hunger for tales of marginalized struggle is so voracious that I wonder if, on some deep, dark, shameful level, we quietly enjoy the idea of disabled people having to suffer in order to earn their place in the world. If access comes easily, if an environment is supportive and if barriers aren’t blocking a person’s path, do their accomplishments count?

Maybe not, or at least, not as much. No one wants to hear a story without conflict, so what’s the value of a disabled person’s story if it doesn’t involve plenty of misery?

This romanticism of struggle bled into the way I viewed my life, even as I was living it. I kept waiting for the adversity I faced to make me better, more resilient. Mostly it just made everything worse.

Logic dictated that being a blind person in a visual world would make learning, travel, and daily life more complicated. Of course debilitating chronic pain would make me less dependable, less inclined to pursue great things and explore my creative side. Why wouldn’t mental health issues contribute to my low energy levels and aversion to new challenges? Wouldn’t it be odd if they didn’t?

And yet, because I’d grown up surrounded by triumphant stories of struggle, of people being more successful precisely because they had suffered and come through, I expected that, if anything, my disabilities meant the bar was even higher for me.

The shoulds came thick and fast: my mental ill health should turn me into an unpredictable but admirable genius. My blindness should help me smash barriers to bits with superhuman aptitude. My personal haters and doubters should spur me to work harder, instead of making me feel unwelcome and afraid as they were trying to do.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I understand that I thrive best when my health is good and my environment is supportive. At present, I’m surrounded by positive, encouraging people who want me to flourish, and by God I’m flourishing. No longer do I cower at the very thought of a real challenge. Weirder still, I’m a bit of an adrenalin junkie. I crave variety and I need constant, low-grade stress to be content. Give me a new project, a tight timeline and vague instructions, and watch me crush it. If you’d told me all this five years ago, before I’d ever known such support, I’d have laughed in your face. “No no,” I’d say, “I’m more of a ‘scared of my own shadow’ type.”

As far as I can tell, I owe very little to pain and suffering. Adversity has been useful enough in some ways, but I will never claim to do my best work while beset by destructive forces. Shocker of all shockers: Not everyone soars in the middle of a hailstorm, and it’s strange and sad that we ever expected they should.

Perhaps you’re one of those remarkable creatures who functions well under the worst of conditions. Maybe you’re doing great during this pandemic, while most of the world flounders. It’s possible you’re one of those unicorns, disabled or nondisabled, who confronts terrifying situations—bullying, discrimination, six-lane intersections—and comes out of them more badass than ever. (Teach me thy way!)

But I’m not a unicorn. Many, many of my disabled friends are not unicorns, either, and we get down on ourselves when the troubles that are supposed to make us better end up tiring us out instead. Lots of us get bullied, discriminated against or hit by cars in six-lane intersections, and then we go home and cry because it hurts and it sucks and we hope it’s a long time before we have to go through that again. These things may not break us, and we might get a good blog post out of them if we’re lucky, but we sure as hell bend.

Let’s share some new stories — stories that make room for people who get things done in times of crisis, yes, but who also know the value of environments where they are supported and encouraged. I want to amplify stories about disabled people who get the tools they need, the access they deserve, and the inclusive communities they crave, and who accomplish wonderful things as a result.

I’ll start: Once upon a time, there was a disabled gal named Meagan who did okay in the face of adversity, but who wanted more from life than leaping from hurdle to hurdle. After years of being low-key miserable and unable to fulfill her potential, she found the access and support and community she needed. She blossomed. She accomplished some very cool things, which were no less valid because she wasn’t ‘overcoming’ anything more daunting than her own self-doubt at the time. Also, she had very few haters, and that was handy. She lived happily ever after, terrible mobility skills and nasty migraines and inconvenient mood disorder notwithstanding. (My blog, my ending.)

Not exactly riveting, sure. But it’s kind of a nice change, don’t you think?

Stay safe and healthy, folks, and make some space for happy stories.

Finding Your Hive: Longing for Usefulness as a Disabled Worker Bee

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Over the past few years, I’ve been focusing less on sheer survival and more on living in a way that brings me lasting contentment. Common wisdom for such a pursuit most often begins with ‘find your tribe’ sentiments.

Said wisdom did seem to be working well for most everyone I knew. Each time a friend picked up a hobby or clicked with a social group, their general happiness seemed to improve tenfold. Then there was me: phenomenal friends, supportive coworkers, closely knit family, thriving romantic partnership. My social life was thriving for the first time since high school, and loneliness had become something other people suffered. I was even beginning to explore creative hobbies after too much time spent in stagnation. My writing showed promise, and music, that stalwart friend, was a central part of my life again.

So where was the life improvement squad? Where was the revelatory sense of purpose? Where was the click?

Maybe I was supposed to order it. Maybe I’d have to go online and fill out some form and half the fields would be unlabelled and everything would be colour-coded and then the CAPTCHA verification would be inaccessible and maybe I should just have a nap?

Anyway, just as I accepted my destiny as incorrigible malcontent, I found a comfortable niche at a new job. The work I do offers abundant opportunity for individual accomplishment, but there is also a lot of work that’s unglamourous, uncredited and, therefore, quite unpopular. It needs done, and when it’s done well it brings enormous value to the team, but no one likes doing it.

Well, no one but me.

Once I developed a widespread reputation for being the person who’s up for anything, always willing to embrace the ‘hard’ in ‘hard work,’ I felt it — my resounding click. I was useful, and that was just what I’d been looking for.

You see, like many rural kids, I grew up in a culture obsessed with usefulness. There was always work to do, and if there wasn’t, you weren’t looking hard enough. All around me, my sighted peers were making themselves useful mowing acres of grass, feeding livestock, doing renovations, operating farm equipment, changing someone’s oil. You name it, someone my age was doing it.

As for me, I could usually be found unloading the dishwasher or doing laundry while everyone else rushed about doing things I was too blind to tackle. In an environment like mine, if you couldn’t drive, couldn’t see, couldn’t learn purely by observation (no one had time for adapted training, even if they’d known how to carry it out), there was no sugar-coating it: you weren’t of much use. I know plenty of rural blind people learn most of these things by grit or gumption or good, patient teaching—see you in the comments, guys, keep it civil—but for reasons that are numerous and complicated and not at all relevant here, I didn’t.

So, in effect, I spent my formative years knowing I was not very useful, while up to my eyeballs in a culture devoted to utility. As you can guess, that understanding sank deep into my marrow and helped forge who I’d become: A restless, rudderless person who couldn’t work out what would make her truly happy.

Being academically inclined was nice. Being reasonably intelligent was handy enough; that would help me make money later, maybe. My singing brought others joy, even if it wasn’t going to babysit their kids or cook their dinners. But I felt like a defective worker bee in a very busy hive, and no one seemed to know what to do with me.

It took me way too long to realize what I need for true contentment is less ‘find your tribe’ than ‘find your hive’. I’m not wired for attention and I’m not especially motivated by approval. I like working with other people, but community, important as it is, doesn’t fulfill me on its own. As it turns out, finding my people is my nice-to-have, not my must-have. What I hunger for isn’t attention, recognition, or a group of people who ‘get’ me, though I won’t say no to them. Instead, I am the ultimate team player, totally invested in a job well done. I want to have your back, not take your limelight. I want you to notice me for my dependability, not so much for my brilliance, though again: I won’t say no to that either. If I’m competing with anyone besides myself, it’s to see who is most helpful, not who is most impressive. I hunger for the knowledge that because I’m around, doing my best work, someone else’s life is easier.

I wonder, as I write this, whether other disabled people have the same worker bee drive. Plenty of nondisabled people crave this sort of external validation, of course, but I have a feeling there are a lot of disabled people out there who, having been labelled ‘of little use,’ have grown into restless, rudderless people like me, asking themselves why they never feel whole unless others are counting on them.

And I’m sure there are many more out there who have yet to feel useful, at least by society’s narrow standards. Isn’t most disability defined, after all, by the work a person can or can’t do? By our earning potential? By our limited ability to contribute financially via the labour market? Don’t so many of us find that the only thing worse than a bad job is no job at all? Beyond financial constraints, what would unemployment say about us and our worth?

I think you’re out there, worker bees. I think you’re worried about whether you’ll ever be useful enough, and I think you find meaning in what you manage to get done. I believe you have mixed feelings about the fact that the toxic mentality that made you feel small and inadequate is giving you such fulfillment. I expect you live to hear people say, “you really helped me out today,” and I’d bet some part of you balks at the very thought of being so vulnerable to how others feel about you.

If I were to guess, I’d say you might even question whether enjoying your usefulness demonstrates a lack of self-respect, a brokenness, an internalized ableism you can’t quite shake.

Am I getting warmer?

So if you’re out there, worker bees, I propose the middle ground, as I so often do. Delight in your usefulness. Find the niche that lets you be a go-to person, even if it’s for something simple. Relish it without apology.

Yes, our society is obsessed with measuring the utility of human beings and punishing or rewarding them accordingly. Yes, that obsession is more pronounced and more damaging when those humans happen to be disabled. But don’t let that deprive you of the pride and fulfillment you derive from your ordinary, unglamourous work. Don’t chase admiration simply because someone told you that the only good disabled person is an outstanding one. Most importantly, don’t you ever buy in, the way I did, to the idea that your value lies in how well you stack up next to nondisabled people. That way lies madness. Life doesn’t have to be a competition. The unremarkable, uncredited tasks you perform every day have weight. All you have to be is the best version of yourself.

Go, worker bee, and find your hive. And when you do, take what brings you happiness and leave the rest.

Weightless, Wanted, Worthy

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While reading Martin Pistorius’s powerful book, Ghost Boy, I was struck by a passage in which Martin, experimenting with a body that does not behave predictably, attempts to make breakfast for his partner, Joanna.

I forced the knife downwards, cleaving it to my will as it hit the side of the toast before skittering across the plate and leaving a glistening red slick on the table. I stared at the battered toast before looking at the floor, which was covered in coffee granules and sugar. The butter looked as if a wild animal had chewed it and jam had erupted like a volcano across the table. Euphoria filled me. I’d made toast, coffee was waiting in the cups, and the water had boiled—Joanna was going to have breakfast. I banged a spoon on the table to let her know I was ready, and a smile spread across her face as she walked in. “How nice to have breakfast made for me!” she said.

Some might interpret Joanna’s enthusiasm as pretense. As you read through the book, you quickly discover that while Joanna is fully aware of the many barriers Martin faces, she supports his efforts to try new things, even when they end in an imperfect, sticky mess. Martin and Joanna’s marriage is founded on genuine respect and validation, with no suggestion that she is giving anything up to be with him. Rarely have I seen such a beautifully balanced framework, where limitations are acknowledged but never allowed to overwhelm the entire structure.
Naturally, reading about Martin and Joanna got me thinking about my own relationship. My partner has a disability of his own, but it is invisible, and comes up so rarely I sometimes forget it exists at all. We live much like a couple in which only one party is disabled, and we both had to adjust to the different things we need from each other to grow and be happy.
In addition to needing all the conventional things, like love and companionship and the space to laugh with someone in the face of life’s trials, I also crave specific validation from my partner—the validation that says, “I acknowledge that you are disabled, but you are no less complete for it.” From day one, even as I walked him through my various barriers and how they might be an issue for him, he treated me like a whole, autonomous person, and nothing less. If I ever feel inadequate or out of place in the context of our life together, it is my own anxiety talking, not his. Again and again over the past few years, I have been caught off guard by the simple, implicit trust this man places in me every day, without thought and without a hint of charity. Strangers on the bus might wonder what I’d do without him, but he frequently asks me what he’d do without me.
What does this look like in practice? Mostly, it’s an intangible thing—more felt than seen, and usually unspoken. I can point to scores of small things that add up to a larger pattern, and that’s how I can best explain the dynamic.
For example, he asks my opinion on things, with the assumption that of course I’ll have one, and of course it’s as valid as anyone else’s. He doesn’t bombard me with questions about how “blind people” feel about X Y or Z. No, he asks about the best way to install a showerhead, or which ingredients would enhance a new recipe, or what political news of the week is most relevant. Far from assuming I mustn’t be knowledgeable about anything outside the realm of my disabilities and personal interests, he assumes that I am likely to know a little about a lot, and if I’m not sure, I’ll be straightforward about that. I don’t always have opinions or suggestions, but it is so novel and so satisfying to be asked as an equal—as someone who knows things and whose judgment can be trusted. It shouldn’t be so remarkable, but I think most disabled adults would agree that unless the topic is disability-related, our voices are often overlooked.
Like Joanna, my partner doesn’t expect perfection from me, but does expect me to experiment, and won’t ever shame me for the results. He would rather I demolish the kitchen cooking breakfast than have me avoid cooking altogether in case something goes wrong. It’s not that he humours me or enjoys watching me struggle. He simply expects me, as his partner, to contribute where I can and shed my irrational insistence on perfection. If I get hopelessly lost while attempting to conquer my travel demons, he’ll still be sincerely proud that I was brave enough to try, without resorting to empty praise or minimizing my mistakes.
As I’ve noted several times on this blog, living well with disability requires a great deal of self-confidence—or plenty of skill at faking it until you make it—because that confidence won’t come easily from outside yourself. If you don’t have faith in your abilities, you may struggle to find someone else who does. The less you feel you have a right to your place in the world, the less welcoming the world seems to be. While I’ve cultivated my own strong sense of self-respect, I’ve discovered it’s far more bracing when my partner reflects it back at me. I am fortunate indeed to make my home with someone whose faith in me exceeds my own, never hesitating to remind me I am whole.
I’ll return to Martin’s words, because he put it so beautifully: “I’ve lived my whole life as a burden. She makes me feel weightless.”
I, too, have lived my whole life worrying that I am too much like unwanted luggage. But he, together with so many others, makes me feel weightless, and wanted, and worthy.
From where I’m standing, there is no greater love than that.

The Man Who Taught Me To Fish

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Being disabled means having your competence questioned at every turn. It means accepting that your intelligence, your autonomy, your very worth are always up for debate by those least qualified to make judgments. It means, therefore, that you must be resilient, whether or not it comes naturally. Finding this strength, this essential self-reliance, can come about in many ways. For me, one of the fortunate ones, the tools for independence were introduced early and often.

* * *

We kneel together on the thin carpet of my bedroom. My favourite cassette tape, a collection of fairytales, is in my small, tentative hand. Speaking softly, my father explains how to slide the tape into the player—gently, now—and places my fingers on “play.” As the opening music rings out and understanding of my new skill breaks over me, I can only smile widely enough to split my face, thinking dreamily of how delicious growing up can taste. It’s a small step, playing my own audio books, but the joy lingers.

* * *

Each time I learn something new, even mundane things like the location of straws at the Starbucks near my apartment, I experience a moment of undiluted triumph. Rarely overconfident, I am not the archetype of success some would wish me to be. Instead, I skirt the gaps in my knowledge and abilities with an unthinking ease bolstered by years of practice. While my blind peers pursue adventure and hone new skills for the sake of doing so, I hold my shameful passivity close to my chest, owning what is necessary and burying everything else. Showing weakness, I have learned, is a grievous sin; admitting I’m comfortable with slow progress is worse. Even so, as I break this ancient habit and push my boundaries, I feel a thrill that once coloured each day of my childhood, when there was someone there to rejoice along with me. Of course he would still do so, if I called him on the phone and said “Hey, Dad, I learned a new route today.”. My cheerleader is still waiting in the wings, should I ever need him.

* * *

We are traipsing through an amusement park in the sweltering summer heat. I am sulky and bored in that particular way of children. I’ve had my fill of rides and novelty food; I am ready for familiar surroundings and a good book. As I prepare yet another whiny entreaty—let’s return to the car, get a cool drink, pull out the Harry Potter novel I wish I was reading—Dad pulls me aside to examine a life-sized, intricate statue of a cow. It occurs to him that I’ve never touched a real cow before, despite having driven past them a hundred times. As he runs my hands over the statue, describing each part with patient enthusiasm, I realize I’m feeling just a little less blind, a little more curious about the world around me.

* * *

The process of spontaneous discovery was a common feature of my childhood years. Seized by inspiration and vicarious wonderment, Dad would pause and encourage me to notice a rhubarb plant, an earthworm, a bird’s nest. New kittens were placed delicately in my eager hands, and I was permitted, even encouraged, to hammer in a few nails or help paint a wall. If it captured my interest, it was mine to touch and try and learn. Assumptions about safety and propriety and ability were seldom made. Mine was a world of discovery, because Dad had no doubts, no reservations, no unreasonable fears.

And so, I had no fears, no doubts, no reservations of my own.

* * *

“I’m just bad at math, okay? I’m stupid, I guess.”

Salty tears stain the Perkins brailler I’m using to hammer out surface area calculations. Slightly flummoxed by all the tears, Dad makes a joke about me rusting the metal brailler if I don’t stop crying. He coaxes a grudging laugh from me, but the levity doesn’t make the work any easier. I have sat before this abstruse tactile diagram of a cube for literal hours, convinced that I must be less intelligent than fellow students, all of whom had exclaimed that this unit was simple. I, a star student then, had trouble accepting this reality in which I was in need of help with my homework.

I look up to find Dad placing a wooden cube in my hands.

“I went to the shop and made you some shapes. I think your problem is that you’re not understanding the two-dimensional diagram. I think a 3-D model will make way more sense to you. You’re not dumb; I know you can understand this. See?”

Sure enough, as he points out each facet of the cube, demonstrating how they correspond to the ones on the page, something clicks into place. Suddenly, I’m finding surface area as easy as everyone else had, all because someone was able to teach in a way I could grasp.

I am not stupid after all, or terrible at math; I am just blind—blind, and very bad at deciphering diagrams, apparently.

* * *

Blindness has taught me to work more diligently than others. In my slow, steady climb, there is little room for self-doubt–no room at all for surrender. When everyone else seems poised to give me an out, to say, “Well, Meagan, you tried your best; you can go home now…” I am compelled to reply in the same way each time: “Never.” The stubbornness and refusal to concede, (the very qualities that justly infuriated my father while I was growing up), are the sources on which I draw for support through each new hurdle.

When voices say, with stolen authority, “Meagan, you’re blind. You will never—“ another voice pipes up, strident even in its uncertainty: “Watch me.” Much as Dad must have cursed my inflexibility, I think he has grown to respect its power. He should, for I believe he is the one who gave it to me.

Dad taught me to fish, of course. I’ve been fishing since I was so small that my rod had to be tied to my life jacket. He taught me to cast and jig and reel in even the feistiest ones. He also taught me to respect the fish, never causing undue suffering or taking more than my share.

But, as you may have guessed, he taught me to fish in other, less obvious ways. His unwavering faith in my personal abilities meant I was rarely allowed to think of myself as incapable. Disabled, sure, but never incapable. I was discouraged from wallowing in self-pity, or inviting anyone else to feel pity, either. Through patience and determination, my father convinced me that I am strong—not constantly, but often enough to succeed. To this day, my dad is the person I think of first when I prove to myself, once again, that blindness doesn’t have to ruin my life or my career or my dreams. Whenever he describes something new or lights a much-needed fire under me, I remember and honour the joy of learning to fish—because at the end of the long, hard day, all I have is me. I have my father, among many others, to thank for making sure I’m a damn good person on which to lean.
So, thank the people who taught you how to fish, and those who remind you that you still know how. You owe them a lot.

Guest Post: Building Bridges

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Today, we’re very lucky to have a guest post by Gregg Chambers. As he’ll explain below, he is covering the very thorny issue of mutual understanding. As blind people, we understand that we’ll never know what it is to be sighted. That said, we must also acknowledge that sighted people (even if they close their eyes and bumble around for a bit bashing into things) will never understand what it is to be blind. As I’ve mentioned, this is a profound and thorny issue, and so Gregg brings you his take on the matter (with far more eloquence than I could). I promised I wouldn’t try to speak for all blind people, and I won’t; however, I’m more than happy to let others speak for themselves, and am proud to give them the venue in which to do it. So without further ado, here’s Gregg.

 

 

We often say that “everyone is different”, and what we usually mean is that difference is not something to be feared or persecuted. Misunderstanding is probably the single largest gulf we need to cross, if we can, and in that light I’d like to offer some insights that might help us narrow the gaps in our understanding of one another.

 

The very first thing I want to do is to clear up one particular misconception. These bridges, as it were, rarely cover their intended distance entirely. There is always a little space across which you must leap or, more often, be carried.

 

Misconception 1: The blind and the sighted can understand one another’s worlds completely if they try hard enough

 

No, they can’t. They can try very very hard, and it will never form a complete picture. We must rely on others to carry us across the gaps we cannot bridge on our own.

 

Having been born without my sense of sight, I will never fully understand what it is like to see unless there comes a time where that sense is somehow given to me. If I listen to what people tell me instead of hearing what I expect to hear, if I absorb information and do my best not to make assumptions, I can learn a great deal, but full understanding will forever be beyond my grasp. If you are reading this with a pair of functioning eyes, then you are in the reverse position. You will never know in full detail what it is like to live in a world without light, without shadow, without colour. You will never know on a gut level what it means not to view almost all of your environment visually. All of this is completely okay, because no two people share precisely the same view of the world. Problems arise only when one person presumes to know more about someone else’s situation, either deliberately or without realizing it.

 

Sight is a very resource-heavy sense. If you have it, then most of your experience contains visual elements. If you don’t have it, then you are largely ignorant of those elements. Restoring someone’s sense of sight after they had been blind since birth would be a traumatic, bewildering experience. Robbing a person of their vision would be devastating in its own right. Such drastic changes lead quite naturally to most people pondering how they would cope if they suddenly found themselves blind and, owing to how much they depend on sight, these thoughts usually tend toward how difficult everything would suddenly become. This makes sense, and no one should be blamed for being afraid of a world they do not know and do not yet understand.

 

Misconception 2: All blind people are struggling mightily just to perform everyday tasks

 

No, we aren’t. While many of us do have trouble with certain aspects of daily life, most of us figure things out rather quickly. We do it because we have to, and mostly we don’t even think about it.

 

While blindness might seem foreign and scary to you, it is nothing more than another facet of life for us. We might be anxious in certain situations, particularly if we’ve never encountered them before, but we are not afraid of being blind, any more than you are afraid of having sight. No matter how daunting the prospect of sightlessness is for you, it is very important that you not assume that we view the world the same way. You must remember that for us, blindness is normal, and not frightening at all. Accepting that we can perceive the same thing from different angles is the first step in the right direction.

 

Misconception 3: Being blind would make life virtually unlivable

 

No, it really doesn’t. Life can be annoying, frustrating, exhausting and sometimes nerve-wracking, but most blind people lead full and happy lives.

 

If you are a sighted person who is terrified by the idea of going blind, and you continue to insist that all blind people must be living a nightmare existence, you are letting your fear trump our experience. Let us show you that our world isn’t as bad as it looks, and while we may never be able to convince you that sightlessness isn’t scary, we may be able to show you how we get along from day to day. If you can’t do this, then whether you intend it or not, you will continue to quietly assert that your view of blindness matters most, and doing so has potentially awful consequences.

 

Misconception 4: These fears and assumptions can’t hurt anyone

 

Yes, they can. They can and they do. Just because they aren’t hurting you doesn’t mean they aren’t harming someone else.

 

Blind people are largely very normal. We wish to be needed, to be loved, to be respected, to carve out our own little niche in life and to be happy there. We don’t wish to be made into something we’re not. As soon as you start behaving in a way that limits or glorifies what a blind person does because they can’t see (barring the more obvious things like stopping a blind child from trying to drive a car, for instance), you’re putting your opinion of blindness above everything else, including the person in question. We’re generally perceptive enough to catch this when it happens, and it hurts. It can make us think that someone’s view of us is polarized by something we can’t help or change. It can also cause us to wonder just how much we’re being perceived as people rather than as inconveniences, necessities and complications. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: let us tell you and show you what we can and can’t do.

 

Misconception 5: Blindness is hard, so it’s amazing when blind people do common tasks

 

No, it’s not. Some blind people have done some pretty incredible things, but by and large, the things we do are pretty unremarkable. We eat, dress, shop, go to school, go to work, travel abroad, maintain social lives, make love and raise families just like the rest of the world.

 

While most everyone likes honest praise for a hard job well done or a little encouragement when things are tough, we probably won’t react favourably if you make a habit of blowing our everyday accomplishments out of proportion and giving us praise we neither want nor deserve. Some of us find it condescending, because there is an assumption buried in every bit of unmerited praise: “I couldn’t have done this, so if I couldn’t do it, then you must have had a hard time.. What’s worse is that this sort of behaviour isn’t present when dealing only with sighted people, so the focus is clearly on the sighted person’s perception of blindness as an unbreakable obstacle rather than on the abilities of the specific blind person. We can’t represent ourselves if you force your opinion of blindness to represent us.

 

Misconception 6: Blindness is hard, so I should give blind people a break wherever possible

 

No, you shouldn’t. We largely don’t want a free lunch, and we’re often just as capable of helping out as anyone else. Let us prove it.

 

If, instead of giving too much praise, you want to make our lives easier by letting us dodge things that you presume will be too much effort or will present too much danger, please bear in mind one thing. Although it is wisest to understand someone’s abilities before setting them a task, you will never know the limitations of blindness as well as a blind person. If you know that your blind friend can cook, and if you know that he can get around his neighbourhood pretty well, then not expecting him to bring food to a family reunion on account of his blindness, particularly if others were expected to do so and if he had asked if he should pitch in, would be an insult. Don’t give us busywork or try to puff us up with a false sense of accomplishment either; instead, try and ignore the blindness outright for a moment and then reconsider the scenario. If a blind person knows they are capable, offers to help and is turned down for no other reason than that someone else believes their blindness will make things too difficult, it can foster feelings of worthlessness and, in some, can compound the issue by making the blind person in question stop trying to offer help. What’s the point in offering to assist if you’re always going to be turned down, after all?

 

If the way I’ve displayed these misconceptions strikes you as obvious to the point of offense, I apologize. They may appear this way because the thoughts which drive them are so simple and direct that they often go unrecognized. I believe that when the above situations do occur, they happen mostly without consideration, and that’s most of the reason I decided to write this post. If I can get one person to stop and think before deferring a task, if I can get one person to ask instead of assuming, then I can safely say that I’ve done something worthwhile.

 

Every one of us has something to learn. There are no exceptions. If all of us can remember this one thing, above all others, then we should be able to bridge the empty spaces in our comprehension of one another. If that happens, the pain caused by ignorance and intolerance will recede, replaced by the curiosity and eagerness of an open mind.