The Weight of the World

I thought I truly appreciated the title of Ayn Rand’s popular novel Atlas Shrugged for its clever use of classical mythology to describe a dramatic shift. I thought I comprehended the significance of such a reference. Then I did the math for this post. If you ever felt as if you carried the weight of the world on your shoulders, you can empathise with me right now. That background weariness, the tension that makes every mistake pull just a little harder on your last nerve, the lack of patience with other people because, really, they have no idea what you’re going thorugh and asking if there’s anything they can do is taking up your precious brainspace for solving life’s great problems. It’s not a pleasant feeling, and most of us noble sufferers would love to just shrug that weight off, just for a minute! Just one minute…

The world weighs roughly 5.972x10^24 kilograms. That’s a pretty incomprehensible number – especially if you’ve been out of school long enough to forget how to convert powers of 10. In simpler terms, that’s 17.6 quintillion Boeing 747’s, or 412 quintillion Oreo cookies, standard size (guess what I’m snacking on right now/). Still too big to wrap your head around? That’s the point. The weight of the world feels insurmountable. There’s no way around it, and you’re Atlas, all alone on your hill holding up the whole bloated thing. And all you want is a break, just for one blessed minute!

About 56.7 million people in the United States have some sort of disability. That’s roughly 19% of the population (census.gov, 2012). This includes temporary disabilities and age-related disabilities. About 1/3 of that number are in the workforce today, according to the 2010-2012 census data (dol.gov, 2012). 2.3% of the American population is blind, legally blind, or visually impaired (nfb.org, 2013). That’s about 7 million people, give or take a thousand. And on average there are less than two thousand dog guide teams currently working at any given time. You want to talk minority? I’m in all three of these categories, even that teeny tiny one at the end.

This means that I am often the first, sometimes only, dog guide user, blind person, and/or disabled person that many people meet. Talk about pressure! Any awkwardness, any clumsiness, any attitude or doggy misbehavior reflects strongly on these three groups of people, and public opinion of our capabilities and behaviours are so incredibly important to our employment opportunities, access laws, and peoples’ general willingness to go out of their way to offer assistance when it isn’t legally required. I have been trained to advocate for myself and others, to educate individuals and groups about disability rights, service dog rights and training, and adaptive living and educational solutions to show the sighted public, and the impaired public, that blindness in its various forms is only a barrier to a select few activities, like driving or flying an airplane. I am acutely aware of every stumble, every item I knock over on the edge of a counter, every time Greta sniffs something she ought to leave alone while working because I know it says something to someone about me and the minorities to which I belong. Talk about the weight of the world…

It turns out, though, that, per usual, there is a healthy level of awareness and an unhealthy level. When I drop a dish in my own kitchen in the presence of a housemate and suddenly feel as if I’d damaged the reputation of blind peoples’ capacity for independent living in her eyes I have clearly taken this to an unhealthy extreme. This is a realisation I came to last night. I had no idea that I was trying to carry the weight of the entire disabled population’s reputation on my own two narrow little shoulders every moment of my day, in public and in private. It’s time to let some of that go.

My dear disabled friends, my dear friends of any minority, be it religious or ethnic, racial or economic, or any other subgroup, remember you are part of a minority, not the whole of it. You may be someone’s first impression, or only impression, but you are only that when you meet that person, when you are in his or her presence. Be an advocate, be an educator. It is a good and wonderful thing you do for yourself and for all your fellowship, but be that in public, and in private be at peace.