Living a Life Everyone Fears
Superman, Greg, and the immortal Quaizar
Hear me read this post on the Deep Sy podcast!
A thought experiment. Imagine a perfectly normal person named Greg who lives in the fictional comic book city of Metropolis. Greg is walking down the street and Superman descends from on high, landing right in front of him.
“Citizen,” he says, “I wish to commend you on your bravery.”
“Superman!” Greg shouts in surprise, “What an honor! But surely it is you who should be commended for bravery. Whatever have I done? I am a mere dental insurance salesperson.”
“No, citizen,” Superman replies, “You are most certainly brave. Not because you purvey policies to insure the wellness of your fellow humans’ teeth and gums, but because you walk about the streets as though your frailty and devastating physical vulnerabilities do not bother you in the slightest.”
“Oh well goodness, thank you for your kind words, Su—Wait, sorry, what?” Greg says, suddenly confused.
“Yes,” Superman explains, “You see, there is virtually nothing for me to fear walking down the street. My skin is impenetrable. My bones are unbreakable. Why, your dental insurances are of no use to me at all because my perfectly white smile would be unaffected even if it were the direct point of contact with a speeding car.”
“A car is going to hit your face?” Greg asks.
“Perhaps not, but I don’t need to fear it happening, as you do,” he responds.
“But I don’t fear a car hitting me while I’m just walking on a sidewalk. I’m not particularly worried about the penetrability of my skin either, or how breakable my bones are. I’m just going to buy a coffee,” says Greg.
“Truly remarkable,” Superman says as he smiles condescendingly. He shakes Greg’s hand vigorously and flies off. Greg stares into the sky, reevaluating how cool he thinks Superman is.
After this encounter, how would Greg feel? Would he suddenly develop a deep fear of his environment, as Superman imagines he should, or would he just think Superman is a bit weird?
Superman didn’t tell Greg anything new. He was already aware of his physical vulnerabilities. Superman put them in stark relief, but Greg has always lived with them. They are not something Greg thinks about regularly. They are just facts about his life.
There is nothing he can do about human frailty. Except maybe join a cult that promises immortality if he will pay the leader (who is the eternal God Quaizar trapped in the body of a guy named Rick) huge sums of money, move to his compound in Florida, and take his endangered leopards on their daily walk. At least they can’t kill him thanks to Quaizar’s Elixir of Power. But barring that, Greg’s life will not change in any meaningful way after his conversation with Superman, and he won’t feel any more or less brave.
Regular readers may sense where I’m going with this thought experiment. This is, after all, a place where I regularly write about my disability and how non-disabled people interact with it. So where I’m going is obviously this: I have a special discount if you want to start your own business selling Quaizar’s Elixir of Power. Just bring three friends to my seminar this evening.
Ha-ha, only joking (unless you’re interested). No, my point here is that I get called brave all the time, much the same way Superman called Greg brave. People have actually stopped me on the street to tell me how brave I am more times than I can count.
But to be brave, you first have to be afraid. No one will ever place their hand over their heart, give you a sincere look, and say, “You’re just so brave for eating that grape.” Because eating a grape is not scary. Similarly, Greg doesn’t feel brave for going outside without Superman’s powers because Greg doesn’t feel afraid of going outside without Superman’s powers.
When people tell me, “You’re so brave,” they’re really saying, “Blindness sounds scary.” I can sympathize. Most people don’t know how I do most everyday activities, and that level of unknown is unnerving. Or they don’t know where I get the energy and motivation to figure out how to do things in adaptive ways. And I suspect they have a sense that being disabled means facing discrimination. I can even empathize with their fear to some degree. If I imagine having disabilities in addition to blindness, I know it would be a ton of work to relearn how to live my life. It doesn’t sound fun.
But understanding sighted people’s fear of blindness doesn’t make me afraid of blindness. Blindness is still a fact of my life that I’ve lived comfortably with for many years.
I should clarify I’m talking about people who think the act of walking down the street blind is, on its own, scary. There are aspects of blindness that are legitimately frightening, mostly having to do with how people treat us. The reality of unemployment of blind workers due to discrimination is good reason for anxiety. The stories I hear from blind women about harassment and assault by sighted men are truly terrifying. But I’m talking about the apprehension of blindness per se.
Knowing the majority of people are afraid of blindness, when I know with absolute certainty that it feels perfectly normal, is, to put it mildly, odd. I live in a world full of Supermans who are fully convinced their misperceptions are both correct and reasonable. They mislabel their collective ignorance and fear of the unknown as common sense.
I’ve only found one way to process the strangeness of this reality. I have to lean into the following idea and make it a core belief I hold about the world:
Since the average person is terrified of my life, I will be skeptical of the average person’s fears.
When someone says some experience they’ve never had is frightening, but it’s something other people live with every day, my reaction is usually, “I doubt it.” Maybe they can’t imagine someone’s disability or other life circumstance. Or some unfamiliar new group of people is moving into their neighborhood. They might be retelling stories they heard about Some city or country they’ve never spent real time in. Scary? I doubt it.
It’s not me being mean or dismissive. I just know at the end of that conversation, I’m going to walk away down the street with a white cane and no vision, which would also frighten them. To validate their fear would be to pretend that isn’t the case, to excise a huge portion of my life experience.
So you’re probably thinking the lesson here is simple. It’s to pay closer attention to the perspectives of marginalized people for wisdom that helps you holistically understand the world and approach unfamiliar experiences with a more open mind.
No. It’s to eat the free bagels in this Ramada conference room, hear my presentation, and buy $1500 worth of elixir. Whoever sells the most this month gets a Greyhound ticket to the Florida compound for a personal spiritual audit by Quaizar! Let me tell you how it changed my life!
Hey! Where are you going?