That Happens to Other People

Our worldview is shaped by what we know. Work, school, spending time with family and friends. Those things are universal. We also have our niche worlds, shaped by our interests. Music, rock climbing, skiing, movies, whatever our thing is. The more we know about something, the more we can relate to it. I love to ski and have spent more days on mountains than I can count. I know that scene well. There is a vocabulary, a style, an etiquette, a way of doing things. When I hear that a friend had a powder day, I can feel their joy.

I watched a movie recently called The Dawn Wall. Check it out, it is on Amazon. It’s about climbing. Specifically, climbing the hardest part of El Capitan in Yosemite. The sheer face that had never been climbed. It was incredible to watch. In every scene we were either cringing or shouting expletives. I’m not a climber, that is not my scene, I don’t understand it. And for those that live in that world, they do. They get it. They would see that movie from a totally different perspective.

As humans we are mortal. Each of us will cease to exist one day. It is a certainty. Somehow though, dying seems like something that happens to Other People. And when someone we love passes; it feels so unfair. Rare. Because that doesn’t happen to us, it happens to Other People.
What does any of this have to do with Jojo? Well before I was blessed with her, having special needs and being disabled were things that happened to Other People. I didn’t really know a lot and didn’t think about it much. And then suddenly, it was happening. Not to Other People. To me, my husband, my son, our parents.

As I mentioned last time, Jojo is moving onto Kindergarten next year. What I didn’t say about that post is that it was my speech for our district school board meeting. For months I was advocating with several other moms to get the elementary school in our district, where Jojo’s brother F goes, to offer space for a second special ed classroom that the county would run. I sat in these meetings where the special ed kids were spoken about very much as Other. Those are Other kids, that’s a problem for Other People to solve. The conversations went immediately to budget. What will it cost to educate these Other Kids? As if we’re talking about a cost-benefit analysis and not a human. I was outraged. I was deeply saddened. I was so troubled I couldn’t sleep. This went on for a while and then I came to see. It’s not that the school board and administration don’t care about our special ed kids. It just isn’t their scene. They don’t get it. And they need to get it.

Then I turned that critical eye on myself. What isn’t my scene? What am I missing? So many things. Just one example – there is a huge homeless population where I live. That is happening to Other People. I want to remove the word “Other” from that sentence. That is happening to people. People in our community. Ergo us. Maybe we can expand our worldviews a bit by lifting ourselves out of our niche worlds occasionally. Maybe we can get involved in new scenes that will open our eyes to people and situations that are different than us. Different, but not Other. And we can begin to come together.

#Au-Kline Syndrome #Rare Disease #Special Needs