I’M NOT YOUR INSPIRATION … YOU ARE!

I’m writing this month's blog shortly before I attempt my second marathon.  On occasion, I think back to my first marathon, in Victoria, on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. One memory I distinctly recall was the sense of community out there on the course. For runners or wheelchair athletes, who had disabilities, the Victoria Marathon allowed a five-minute head start.   This was an opportunity for para-athletes to get out, to get used to the course and to find their rhythm without having to contend with the crowd of thousands right off the bat. It was great! For fifteen solid minutes, there I was with my guide runner, George, ahead of the pack. We were in the lead - no matter how short-lived!  In time, the rest of the runners began to catch up. First, the elite runners followed by the “less elite” and so on. As more runners passed by, they were congratulating us, giving us high fives and telling us we were doing ‘such a great job’. I kept thinking, “.., but we’ve only run 5k of 42 so far,” as more runners moving past with more congratulations.  In that moment, I thought about the Pace Bunnies. These are the runners wearing bunny ears, so other runners can gage their times and run accordingly. I quipped to George, “Hey, maybe for our next race we should call ourselves Inspiration Bunnies!”  

However, that word “inspiration” has been a source of conflict for me.  In her Ted Talk, "I Am Not Your Inspiration:  Thank You Very Much" Stella Young speaks about something called “inspiration porn” or the problem of “objectifying people with disabilities for “... getting out of bed in the morning and remembering their names.” Young explains that oftentimes people do this to feel better about themselves. I do think inspiration is great.  We all need it and we all need to find it somewhere. Me included! However, Young explains that, as a society, we have been fed a terrible lie that a disability is a “Bad Thing” and to live with one is exceptional. 

Was there anything exceptional about George and I running a marathon in October?  Well, statistically, maybe so. One U.S. stat I came across explains that, in 2014, .5% of the U.S. population ran a marathon. A 2018 stat I found revealed that, in Canada, taking into account the total number of finishers from the top 25 Canadian marathons in 2018, .06% of the Canadian population ran a marathon that year.  I suggest, then, that all of the runners in the Victoria 2019 Marathon, and every other marathon, are a statistical exception!

Let’s move back to Stella Young for a minute. Young went on to write that we run into problems, as a society, when we fail to recognize our friends and neighbours who have disabilities as our teachers, lawyers, actors, vintners and so . This leads me to Jane Poulson - Canada’s first blind medical doctor and author of the book "The Doctor Will Not See You Now"? Interestingly, when I Googled ‘Canadian blind doctor,’ I got a link to a store, in Calgary, that cleans and installs blinds.  They call themselves… wait for it... The Blind Doctor. A play on words or a false expectation that there is no such thing as a “blind doctor”?

Looking back, I think I first experienced “inspiration porn” when Rick Hansen did his Man In Motion World Tour.  Between 1985 and 1987, Rick wheeled 40,000 miles across 34 countries. Inspirational? Absolutely, but now suddenly the bar had been raised. Does every person with a disability now need to be a superhero? I don’t know how this achievement contrasted to Terry Fox’s achievements for me, but I didn’t get the same feeling with Terry.  To me, Terry seemed so down to earth and relatable. Just a regular guy who did something extraordinary because of what he believed in.

Like I stated earlier, we all need inspiration in order to strive harder and to achieve more. In my 40’s, I started mountaineering.  To give you some perspective, these were relatively small mountains - The Adirondacks, outside of Lake Placid in New York State. It didn’t matter to me. I was hooked! The bigger the better I thought. We attempted Mt. Marcy a couple of times. At a height of 5,344 feet, it’s the highest peak in the Adirondacks.  The challenge with Marcy is not its height, but the fact that if you hike the whole trail from base to peak. It’s 7 miles long, crossing two other mountains, before you can get to Marcy. Ironically, on our first attempt we ran out of daylight and my sighted companions decided it was time to turn back. I wanted to continue. The second time we got completely rained out. That first Marcy attempt was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  Many times, it was hiking from boulder to boulder, and a slip could have resulted in a twisted knee or broken ankle. My inspiration, at that time, was Erik Weihenmayer. In 2001, Weihenmayer became the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest. My dreams of climbing Mt. Everest have slowly faded, but I think it’s great to have people who we look to push us forward.  

So, what’s the difference between “inspiration porn” and “real” inspiration?  I think it’s that true inspiration prompts us to achieve more. When we are truly inspired, we glimpse what we thought was unachievable for us in someone who has actually achieved it. It has nothing to do with people’s disabilities, whatever these happen to be. The difference between what Stella Young is warning us against, and my own models of inspiration such as Terry Fox and Erik Weihenmayer is that I don’t value their achievements as “special”.   I value them for living, achieving, and, in Terry’s case, dying, for what he believed in. People with disabilities are not remarkable because they leave their house every morning to go to work or because they have enrolled in University to study human genetics, engineering or psychology. They are not your inspiration, because, if they were, what would that say about you? You would be saying something like, ‘... I could never complete a University degree if I had your disability’. This would be a devaluing of yourself, never mind the other person. What is worth achieving together is getting to a place where our doctors, teachers and personal trainers, who have disabilities, are not remarkable - instead acceptable.  Finally, I’ll end with a Stella Young quotation which I really like. “Disability does not make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does”.