An Ordinary Mystic

The one question that almost always comes up whenever I do disability awareness programs is, "is it alright to help?" On the surface, it seems like a pretty silly question to me, but I do understand people's reticence. Of course there is the media stereotype of the angry cripple protesting, "I can do it myself." But I think it goes deeper than that. While I think some people are sincerely interested in not violating the dignity or independence of someone who has a disability by offering assistance, I think the majority are motivated by a fear of rejection. Let's face it nobody likes to offer help and be told it's not needed, especially in public. But wouldn't it be a much nicer world if any time any of us saw anyone struggling with anything we could feel free to offer assistance without worrying about being rejected or embarrassed, or even about whether or not it is alright to offer to help? Of course the keyword in all this is, "offer."

Most of the people I know who are blind have had the experience of being dragged across a street they did not intend to cross by a well-meaning stranger. And many of my friends who are paraplegics and use manual wheelchairs have experienced sprained wrists and fingers when equally well-meaning and equally unenlightened people have come up behind them and given an unannounced assist without asking first. Assistance that is given without first being offered, is assault and most of us would never think of doing it, but it does happen and it may be the subject of a future rant. What I want to do here is to make it a little easier to offer assistance the next time you see someone struggling with something, whether they have a disability or not and in order to do that I've postulated the existence of what I call The Asshole Factor.

I think that out of all the people who have ever assisted me or offered to assist me, at most 15% have been individuals who forced their assistance on me wanted or unwanted without asking. And that out of all the times people have offered me assistance, which is a considerable number after 37 years of using a wheelchair, maybe 15% of the time I have declined our responded that I would prefer to do it myself. There was a time I was much younger and felt inferior because of my disability, mostly when I was new to the chair and working very hard at re-establishing my independence when I didn't always respond appropriately to genuine offers of assistance. And that out of all the people with disabilities I've known both in my personal life and after nearly 20 years of working in disability related fields maybe 15% have been so fiercely independent, angry or otherwise maladapted that they would consistently respond negatively to any offer of assistance. Therefore to sum up my experience The Asshole Factor postulates that:

15% of the population will always be assholes
15% of any subgroup of the population will always be assholes
15% of the time we are all assholes.

Everybody is entitled to a bad day, if you offer assistance and someone responds inappropriately don't assume that person would always respond the same way or that that individual's response is necessarily representative of all individuals who look like that person.

What it boils down to is whether we want to live in a world where we all standby and watch people struggle because there is 15% chance that if we offer assistance someone might respond negatively, or if instead we choose to create a world where any time any of us sees anyone struggling with anything we feel free to offer a helping hand.