Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
~ Rumi
Andrew Solomon in his book Far From the Tree (2012) advocates for an understanding in which illness, disability and difference become aspects of valued identities. He differentiates between vertical identities that are based on characteristics such as skin color, language, religion and nationality and peer group or horizontal identities in which one differs from one’s lineage such as sexual preferences and physical and mental disabilities. In our vertical identities we feel at least partially respected because we share the trait with some of our parents and ancestors. In our horizontal identities we feel flawed because the sense of difference starts at an early age. Parents often try to protect us from the pain of difference and engage in efforts to “cure” our horizontal identities. Social circumstances condemn Aspergers, dyslexia, ADHD, homosexuality, transgenderism, deafness, blindness and many more variances as symptoms of an illness, a curse or a sin, and force us to engage in obscene pains to normalize ourselves so that we can fit and avoid the pain of difference and marginalization. Identity politics and medical progress collude in homogenizing what is perceived outside of the acceptable norm.
Ability and health are the tyranny of the majority. “There is no ontological truth enshrined in what we think of as good health; it is merely a convention, one that has been strikingly inflated in the past century.” (p.29) Good health is a delusional mean. Any of us can become sick and disabled in an instant. The cycle of life runs from disability to temporary ability back to disability, and that only if you are among the most fortunate you will get In home care services. We are all differently abled from one another, we are all flawed and strange, and social context decides what will be protected and indulged. We all have layers of illness and variance piled on top of the normal. In nature variation and diversity is the only invariable. An autistic person differs from a normotypical person while a deaf person differs from an average. They have specific impairments that can cause struggle and pain, but their disability results from the social context they live in. We are all in the position of needing to take our difference and find ourselves a message or meaning. As communities we should accommodate diversity rather than erase it. The world is made more interesting by having every person in it. Solomon cites the Gnostic gospel of St. Thomas in which Jesus says “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.” Carl Jung says in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections: “In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”
We should alleviate the pain and suffering of each individual to the outer limits of our abilities. By maximizing our health and avoiding illness we do not necessarily devalue those who are sick or otherwise different. But medical and social interventions that one-sidedly aim at making them function more like non-disabled, marginalize the sick and disabled and give them the impression that their selfhood and identity is undesirable. We all teach each other. Our vulnerabilities, differences, difficulties, illnesses, horizontal identities are opportune processes to learn from one another. They help us recognize that vulnerability, illness and disability dispel the myth that autonomy is preferable to dependence. Rumi said that the light enters you at the wounded place and Cohen said that it gets in where there is a crack.
Andrew Solomon, 2012. Far From the Tree. New York: Scribner.