(9th Entry) Pride or Prejudice… Or? Part I

(Really a continuation of… It’s all about me! Entries 7 & 8)

Pride or Prejudice… Or is there another option? This blog entry has the potential to be very trite or extremely profound. Nothing in the middle will suffice!

When I was sixteen while attending a retreat I participated in an exercise. One of the questions was, “if we died today what would we want our epitaph to read?” I came up with… “I do what I can and that which I can not do I do anyway.” This is the ultimate definition of “over-coming”. I am responsible. I do not need help. And definitely do not ask for help.

I can remember being at a mall or some other place that had multiple doors when I was younger. If someone held the door open for me I would walk to the other end and open the door for myself. I had to show them that I could do it for myself. One day I was asked, “Do you ever hold the door open for people?” And the next question was “Why”? When you’re over-coming something, it’s all about “you”. I need…! Most polite people hold the door for those behind them. It’s that simple. It wasn’t always a commentary on me.

The irony is that at the same time I would use my disability as a way of getting out things that I didn’t want to do. I wanted “my cake and eat it too” as the saying goes. I wanted the best of both worlds… Who doesn’t? I could often get away with it. The only problem is that this created guilt. I knew deep down that I wasn’t doing all that I could do in life. This is what made it so easy to judge or condemn the man on the subway. Look at me! Look at what I can do. Look at what I’m doing. Yet… “I held back, reserved, and never knew.”

Like I said at the beginning of this entry, it “has the potential to be very trite or extremely profound.” I wanted to throw these ideas out so that I can build upon it in the future. It might take more blog entries to clarify these ideas, however.

To over-come is pride! This is pretty simple to understand. To think that we don’t need others, or others help, that we can “go it alone” is total arrogance. But when you’re trying to over-come, you isolate yourself… maybe not physically or socially, but definitely emotionally.

Prejudice is much more complicated. My prejudice on the subway came from my anger, my frustration, my inability to understand what I was experiencing in life. I’ve listened and known so many people over the years that say that they just want to “go on with life”. But what does this mean? I wanted to go on with life. Yet…

The object is “to learn to live with and in” our disability. REMEMBER: Everyone has a disability… a wound of some sort!