Are You ‘Enough’?

You may be enough and a whole lot more, if…

I’m old enough to remember how people with disabilities were treated. I don’t remember any such people attending school with me, either in primary, or high school.

Most were locked away…at least they might as well have been. There was no socializing, their perspective very much as myopic and as framed as the window through which they often viewed their world. In fact their families were very much, their world.

I was pretty young at the time, and to be honest, rather scared of those deemed different. That’s because I had very little opportunity to see what they might offer, in terms of friendship, or ability.

These days I view disability a whole lot differently. I truly believe that the day someone saw fit to add the ‘dis’ to ‘ability’, was the day we shortchanged a whole sector of humanity.

Think about it this way.

Imagine the spectrum of ability. On one end we see huge potential, and (until recently), not a lot on the other. The negative side was a setting sun in terms of expectations, so that one whole society of dis(es), went to their graves, shortchanged.

I suspect they also passed to the hereafter with hopes smashed. We can never know, but we only have to look at some present-day disabled to realize we could have done so much better in terms of giving them a life, and recognizing their potential.

My father employed a young man Gordon, in his business, largely just to do errands, but the two days he worked there, were ones he always looked forward to, especially when we kids turned up after school and had a chat with him…and easily interpreted his speech, something Dad could not easily do.

What kind of life was his? If two days out of seven are the highlights in your life, what about the other five? That is just not good enough.

And though they probably did their best, what kind of life did his parents enjoy?

I suspect life stopped for them on the day Gordon was born. And I’m pretty sure they would have been told not to expect anything from their son. Such a hard pill to swallow, and the attitude hard to comprehend.

In another time, another era…how differently things may have played out for Gordon, and many others.

Timing is everything, isn’t it!

Fortunately much has changed. People are no longer defined by their disability. Today we are more likely to measure the individual’s starting point, and use it as a stepping stone to effectively support them on their journey.

We don’t have the crystal ball, and nobody can predict their future, but there’s no doubt we can do better for all with a disability. When we start to see the ‘more’ of them, we can gradually phase out the ‘less’, and the whole world will be better for it.

Perception is everything. If you can look at a disabled person and see something positive, what can it mean? Can there be a little niche for that person…somewhere?

I suspect my brother John was also on the spectrum, but he was never diagnosed. In so many ways I am glad that he wasn’t, because, whilst he wasn’t into school, I believe, school just wasn’t into him. Nobody looked for the positives.

It wasn’t that he didn’t learn. It wasn’t that he was a bad student, just that nobody thought of ways to work through his quirkiness, or to look for the positives in him, and believe me, there were many, and I’m not just referring to his good looks!

So of all of us, he was the one to leave school and just work jobs that suited him. Taxi-driving was his greatest love. He was an open book, if you were lucky enough to call him.

Need some advice (or not?), it was freely given.

Happy to listen to historical perspectives on the surrounding areas of the shire in which he lived? He was a mine of information.

Happy to have his take on things political? You got it!

His regular customers loved him. It was a two-way street.

He was enough…and a whole lot more. Moreover, he was happy with his lot in life.

Which leads me to pose the question, how can we ever reasonably gauge success in life?

John was incredibly resourceful, and hands-on clever, (read, successfully installing his new kitchen, his bird aviary, and the likes!).

He was in tune with nature and the world.

He was much loved within his select community.

He was the go-to man when things went wrong, in the village. When his neighbor didn’t show for a couple of days, he was the one who broke down his door, because, as he said, he knew what to expect. His ‘experience’ was finding his wife dead in the garden one morning. She had gone to visit a relative the night before, slid on the ice in the back yard, hit her head, and perished in the cold. Not the kind of experience one would like to have, but for him, all in a day’s work.

He was much loved by us, sheltered in many respects, and lucky, in that, he measured his own abilities, and lived accordingly.

A friend of mine (a former student), has a son with autism. He’s young at present, ten years old, and his parents are already demanding the necessary help. He sees possibilities in the minutia, in things others might drop in the bin. He imagines. He engages others. He has friends, great friends. His life is full.

Yes, he’s autistic, whatever that means.

Autism comes under the disability umbrella, be ye at one end of the spectrum, or the other.

If you want to find out about the most successful people in the world, just add the word ‘autism’ to your search. There’s a whole bunch of them:

• Dan Ackroyd
• Susan Boyle
• Lewis Carroll
• Charles Darwin
• Steve Jobs
• Nikola Tesla
• Andy Warhol
• Hans Christian Andersen
• Bill Gates
• Hannah Gadsby

This list is far from all-encompassing, but it’s reassuring for many of us who cringe about the extensive labeling that takes place, often due to a person thinking differently. What a sad old, stunted world it would be if we all thought along the same lines.

Now, I’m not a great player on Facebook, I have nonetheless been able to follow the lives of children born with Down Syndrome, one in particular called Daisy in, As Fresh As A Daisy.

To say that Daisy is loved, is an understatement.

To say that she is valued, and encouraged, even more so.

Daisy has just been accepted into mainstream education where I am sure she will do as well as Annie, who attended school where I worked.

What Daisy’s mother will possibly have to guard against is the small percentage of people who will regard Daisy as not enough.

Is she not enough because she looks different?

Will she not be enough because her speech is a little strangled?

Will she not be enough when others tease her?

The thing is we have to ensure that our own children are more than enough so that they can stand up to the ones who tease.

We have to teach them to be a friend of those who have been labeled.

We have to show them how to affirm the ‘more’ , rather than seeing the ‘less’.

And it wouldn’t be a bad thing for them to develop the perspective of: this could be my sibling.

For be assured, the teasing, or the exclusion, will happen, possible not openly, but it will happen.

We can’t turn back either Daisy’s diagnosis, or that of others, but by our attitude, and by educating our children, we can make things right for them.

And when your children stand tall, and choose to be enough to help others, you can be rightfully proud.

We are, not one of us, more than another. We are enough, and if we bring our enough into how we choose to treat people, the impact will have ripple effects that others will notice, and learn from.

I’ll leave you to enjoy this heartwarming story regarding a dad who was PERFECTLY enough! https://www.facebook.com/HappiestIGV/videos/737612036915342