Limitations

What If We All See Better Because of Them?

Ever noticed…that there appears to be more people, that society considers on the margins, out and about...walking greenways or trails or doing whatever they can do because society has made it easier for them to do so?

This is something, it seems to me, that society should both be able and sensitive enough to help provide for its citizens, who struggle with things in life. It seems consistent with a Judeo-Christian ethic, at the very least. Some may view such things as a subsidy, or an enablement (whatever terms might be closer to somehow being a benefactor). But, perhaps a less conspicuous benefit, so to speak, is that seeing people with everything from simple inhibitions all the way through serious disabilities being able to participate and enjoy more of life might actually inform those who remain naïve to the truth about our own condition. Or, put this way, we can consider the possibility that whatever losses may still await us, there are many others who have not only endured what we might otherwise call setbacks of these kinds, but also turned their disposition towards what can still be done, in spite of certain limitations.

I suspect that there are very few human-beings, over the course of their existence, that don’t encounter some kind of disablement. Those that have not chosen (or been forced) to deal with even some of the harshness of those realities might have a more difficult time embracing the possibilities that remain, rather than simply the losses incurred.

I was walking on a greenway the other day and noticed a woman walking her dog. She obviously had some problems with her legs. As she got closer, I noticed that she had special shoes, which I’m guessing were part of what it took for her to be able to walk at all (not to mention to walk for leisure on the greenway with her dog). It struck me as I observed her go by that she quite possibly was still in some degree of discomfort, even as she was possibly enabled by different forms of assistance (like her shoes). The thought occurred to me that it was as much about her choice to try to participate in something that she wanted to be able to do as anything else. Perhaps she was thinking the whole time about many of the things I suspect would go through my mind (at least at one point or another) about how hard it was for her to walk or why she couldn’t more freely do it like everybody else on the trail (or a whole host of other forms of complaint). But my impression was, having seen her walking before, that her disposition was closer to something like, "I’m going to try to figure out a way to do what I can and what I want to do and not let my disability keep me from participating in and living life as much as possible".

What slows me down, too often, is pain. I can too easily become disheartened by the endurance pain sometimes requires (not saying this to minimize the impact of pain). I have to wonder whether I feel like the highest concern — pain — is too often the most acid-test of what it means to exist in healthy ways, to whatever degree I am able to do so. I suspect, though, that merely the observation of someone moving even within their limitations, creates new space for questions I might not have otherwise imagined. We all, in fact, have kinds of pain and limitations. And, since that is true, we all have a similar opportunity to consider how those both impact and inhibit our sense of being and, perhaps, noticing others attempting (at the very least) to meet the challenges of their life could enable each of us to reconsider how we frame our own limitations.

In some ways, it may be that our collective sensitivity to the needs of others, and also to the servicing of those needs, in fact, services our own. As the often repeated statement occurs, we often receive in proportion to what we give, and so if we maintain a spirit of withholding from others, we actually are diminishing our own opportunity to grow and develop. As our awareness of the interconnectedness of all things increases, we may have more and more capacity to both recognize and embrace such realities.

I used to be able to run on a regular basis; daily, in fact. And, I remember the times as I observed older people walking that it was likely that there would be days in the future that I would no longer be able to run…that I would be walking (just like everybody else). I often wondered about even being confined to a wheelchair. Would I still have enough desire for the experience to be out in nature, that I would actually impose my desire on someone to wheel me out there? To wheel me in some of the places that I had previously walked, and which, before that, I had previously run.

At the time, I noticed that I couldn’t help think about that through a lens of sadness that overshadowed the contemplation of it. And, perhaps, there is an element of that which is not inappropriate. But, what I think I did not fully understand at the time was that any loss of something that I enjoyed would almost automatically equate to something close to the notion that nothing could be enjoyed. And, that has proven not to be the case. For those with a healthy perspective of such things about life, you seem to often hear about something else that emerges from what otherwise might appear to only be decline. And that is something in the order of gratitude and appreciation — certainly for what used to be, but also, for what still is…even what still could be.

That kind of disposition seems to have an effect that not only improves the way they relate to diminishing realities of their lives for themselves, but also arouses something unanticipated in others. What at one point was a dilemma, at another looks more like additional possibility than previously anticipated. And, if we are not actually unlike them, the acceptance of the beauty of such basic dynamics of life and existence actually seem to free us to more fully participate in it, even as we more fully extend that opportunity as much to others, as we do to ourselves.

...through things like greenways or shoes, or time or encouragement...or, perhaps even more, example.

What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.

-- Brene Brown