To Be or Not To Be

Individuals with disabilities are not more or less special — they are not put on this planet to teach us. All of us are born of the same place; all of us are born of our own ways. All of us are here just as we all are—meant to live and breathe and express our greatness the best we know how, in any way we know how.

But we do not see individuals with disabilities born of the same place we are. To make sense of it all we paint pretty pictures of angelic qualities, or dismissive pictures of lacking abilities, or tuck away the pictures in our minds, recoiling in fear and resistance to understanding.

Wil has undoubtably changed my life. But not because he’s special, or angelic, or here to teach me, or less than. He changed my life when I stopped painting pictures to make my mind more comfortable about his disability. He changed my life when I saw his greatness the same as mine, in his own individual way. That he was born of the same place as we all are, expressing his greatness in the best way he knows how, in any way he knows how.

When we see all of ourselves as born perfectly, in our own ways, then this thing called “acceptance” will no longer hold weight, because acceptance will simply—and beautifully complicatedly—be.