Lessons To Be Learned

If you had your television on during the last five or six weeks, it would be hard to have missed some life lessons that were taking place. We have been able to watch a variety of world-class athletes participating in the sports that they love. Thirty-two of the world’s best football (soccer) teams arrived in South Africa to participate in the World Cup. South Africa was a showcase for what can happen when people choose to work together. In the not so distant past South Africa was in the throws of the racial policy called Apartheid. The South Africans obviously have made great strides under the leadership of their new government.

Generally speaking the teams played with great congeniality. Even Spain, the winner of the World Cup, did not win all their games. We must be careful not to define them as the only winner because by doing so we create the implication that the other thirty-one teams were losers. Winning and success are not synonymous; one can be successful without winning, both in athletics and in our personal lives. While there was joy and heartbreak after every individual game, even the players who lost should not be considered losers. The games were refereed by individuals from all over the world. On the whole they did a wonderful job, but some serious errors in judgment were made by a few referees which had monumental effects on some of the teams.  Even in the heat of battle the players generally accepted these decisions with little or no protest. We should recognize that the majority of times most people are making decisions to the best of their ability. There were teams in which the star players failed to fulfill expectations and at other times different players unexpectedly stepped up.

2010 Tour Route

On July 3 another world class sporting event began. The Tour de France is a yearly event which challenges almost 200 top athletes from all over the globe to a grueling bike race which lasts 20 days and covers 3642 kilometers or a little over 2185 miles. Twenty-two teams of nine racers each put their collective and individual skills to the test. On an average day the racers cover over 100 miles.  Some stages are flat, some rolling and some are on extremely mountainous terrain.  The downhill speeds can exceed 60 miles an hour. The bikers race for personal and team success. This is a great test of human endurance both physical and mental, and if we look carefully there is much to be learned. The race presents different challenges to the participants every day. With the large number of racers moving along in tight proximity to each other there are often crashes. Effects of these can range from “road rash” to broken bones. Even racers with broken bones refused to drop out of the race. This year Cadel Evans, a rider from Australia, rode most of the way with a broken wrist. When mishaps happen to a team leader and he falls behind, his teammates drop back to help him catch back up to the group of riders. The person riding in the front of the line cuts the wind which reduces the work the riders behind him must do by as much as 40%. This is called splitstream or more commonly known as drafting.  Team members are constantly changing this front position to keep members fresh. At times racers from different teams will even do this in pursuit of a common goal. Each team has racers called domestiques who keep team members supplied with water.  They must drop back to the support cars behind the racers get a number of bottles and then sprint up to the group to hand the bottles out. Everyone works for the good of the team. In the end with the help of his team members Alberto Contador of Spain won the race. However, all the riders were successful just finishing such a grueling race.
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Racers also must deal with extreme weather conditions. Over the 21 days in the race riders often struggle with road temperatures that can reach 100°.  When they are in the mountains, temperatures can drop as much as 50° from the bottom to the top of the mountain. Often at the summit bystanders will hand them newspapers which the riders place inside their jerseys to help insulate their bodies from windchill experienced on the descent. Sometimes, individual racers will have days when they just are unable to work at professional levels. But like most of the racers on the tour they refuse to give up.

I believe there are lessons to be learned for all of us from watching these professional athletes. We can learn commitment, teamwork to achieve common goals, and refusing to allow pain and fatigue to sidetrack us from our purposes even though we could easily find an excuse to give up. My final observation would be that the challenges and subsequent lessons to be learned here are not just challenges faced by athletes but confront all people in day to day situations including people with disabilities.

All We Are

Living It Up

A while ago I saw Milery Cyrus (aka Hanna Montana) being interviewed on Good Morning America about a photo shoot she had done which was appearing in some fashion magazine. To her credit she talked about the two hours of makeup preparation prior to the shoot and the airbrushing that was done to the photos afterwards before they were ready for the magazine. She concluded by saying this process would make any individual look beautiful and sexy. This was quite a mature, candid and astute observation for such a young woman. During my 34 years of teaching I was constantly trying to help students see themselves in a more positive light. When we are subjected to negative interactions in our daily lives we tend to wonder what is the matter with us. When in reality, we should be thinking what’s wrong with the other person. We are bombarded daily with messages of what the ideal image and lifestyle for us should be. Few, if any of us, can live up to these unrealistic expectations. The majority of people seem to be less than satisfied with their physical features. This is very evident when we look at the rise in cosmetic surgery over the past few years. As Oden Black pointed out in his last blog Love You. Love Me! “We look in the mirror and see deficiencies, which are compounded by everyday negative comments and messages we receive from those around us.” Our society worships youth and perfection. How many times have you turned on the television or opened a magazine to see a celebrity who has had so much plastic surgery they are hardly recognizable. There is an additional obsession for many people to look young and in shape, and many individuals take the shortest and quickest methods available to achieve this goal such as liposuction or dangerous fad diets. If I paraphrase Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths we can begin to see a way to relieve some of this way of thinking.

Suffering is due to desire                                                                                                         

Trying to eliminating desire                                                                                                      

Will lead to a life with less suffering

Several years ago I was seeing a psychiatrist who asked me if I could identify any positive things that had come as a result of my condition. After several minutes of thought, I said I had met some wonderful people, but could think of no others. He then suggested to me that I no longer had to worry about vanity. What a ridiculous statement! If anything I’m more vain. In fairness to him, like most of the doctors I deal with, he had little experience with someone with my disability. The point I’m getting at here is that most people in society have hang ups about the way they look and the way others perceive them. So, as individuals with disabilities we are not as different from others as we may think we are. We would all be much more content and enjoy our lives much more if we accepted our physical selves the way we are and allow nature and the aging process to follow their normal courses.

As Matt Nathanson has written in his song “All We Are”

I kept falling over
I kept looking backward
I went broke believing
That the simple should be hard

‘Cause all we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful, something real

All we are we are
All we are we are
And every day is a start of something beautiful, beautiful

Getting It Right

About five months ago I was asked to blog on a website in Australia. So, I downloaded a clock onto my home page which would tell me the time there and another gadget to let me see what the daily weather was like. At times I publish blogs I’ve used on my own site with minor adjustments. I thought it would be very interesting to write on the blog in another country but I realized there might be some different perspectives once in a while.  There have not been any until my last blog entitled Patience and Persistence which reflected my harvesting a wild turkey the first since my disabling accident 11 years ago. Imagine my surprise when my latest post was introduced by the following two paragraphs written by the blog editor:

 Hi everyone, welcoming you to another blog from Rich Fabend. Just a side note we in no way encourage the use of guns or promote hunting or anything of the sort. In Australia there are tight rules and restrictions and definite no-nos about the use of guns. I in fact love turkeys as I think they are very fascinating creatures.  However I think that there is a great lesson and moral behind the words that Rich  has presented in his blog posts here, and that is about patience and adapting to change.
 … He lives in America and it is currently Hunting season there, thus causing the theme of his posts. But from his posts we can see that disability is a daily thing, however if we learn to live with it in our own way, it moves away from something hat runs our life to something that is part of our being.

When I first started writing about hunting I fully expected I would get responses from individuals who were uncomfortable with those actions.  I also thought any issues would originate in the US and I believed these blogs would be well accepted in Australia. I have absolutely no problem with the comments that were written. Personally, I believe the United States should have stricter gun laws. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized my own misperception of Australia had been formed from watching  movies like Crocodile Dundee, Australia, Quigley Down Under and the television exploits of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter. Obviously, my concepts were inaccurate. I guess that’s the equivalent of people believing that New York State is one huge megalopolis resembling New York City.

While our views of other countries and cultures may be very limited, one thing is perfectly clear to me and that is that, as individuals with disabilities, we are a subculture of our own regardless of where we live in this world. We are brothers and sisters united by our struggle to deal with the profound challenges that confront us every day. I believe, in many ways, we have more in common with each other than we have with many of our able-bodied countrymen. When we communicate there is an unspoken acknowledgment of what our daily lives are like. We immediately understand what each of us is dealing with and feel no great need to explain it.

I orginally started my website www.handihelp.net so we could communicate with each other and more particularly share ideas, shortcuts and equipment that we have developed to reduce the frustrations we face daily. Why should an individual joining our subculture not be able to have ready access to the things that have already been developed which would improve their quality of life? I am speaking here primarily of equipment but I also feel strongly that we should share the mental processes, attitudes and beliefs that have allowed us to adjust to situations that life has chosen to place us in.

So first I should apologize to the people of Australia for the foolish beliefs I had about their country. More importantly, I think we of the world’s disabled community should make greater efforts to share our thoughts and information which will enable us to live more stress-free lives.

Wishes and Daydreams

Both of my nurses have children graduating from high school this year. My primary nurse has been with me for almost 11 years now. Her children are almost like grandchildren to my wife and me. It is her son Devin who’s graduating. When he was young we used to play together. Over the years he has done work around our house, has stayed with me overnight when my wife was away (we call it Adult Sitting) and I’ve watched him grow up. He is a fine young man, as well as a good soccer player and I’ve seen him play a number of times. Devin will be going into the United States Navy, after graduation, and will train to be corpsman.

I’m envious! He’s young and I’m old. He’s got his life ahead of him; most of mine is behind me. He’s fit and I am not. I want to be him, young, healthy, virile with so much to look forward to. Just the other night I was thinking it is too bad life doesn’t begin at old age and go backward to childhood. However, wishing and daydreaming isn’t going to change my situation. But what it does do is help me look at my life and put things in perspective. People come and go every day and little changes in the grand scheme of things. All this is wishful thinking, I guess, but the reality is only the earth goes on. It reminds me of part of the Serenity Poem which was stuck on a bulletin board in the kitchen at my best friend’s house.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. *                                                                               

*Reinhold Niebuhr

So, all things considered, what is the lesson to be learned? Deal in reality, enjoy your life as it is, change what you can and take time each day to smell the roses. We are not here very long so we should make the best of our situation.

Senior Year 2010

Senior Year 1961