The Complications of Kindness
i’m going to ask you to do
something counter-intuitive today
when the world already feels chaotic and
harsh
and unpredictable i’m gonna ask you to
question something
that feels sturdy and good and reliable
i’m gonna ask you to rethink the way you
think about kindness
so let’s start with a story in the story
i’m about 25 years old and i’m doing
something that feels
really normal for me i’m going grocery
shopping
and as a wheelchair user this looks
different for me than it does for a lot
of people
i’ve used a wheelchair for most of my
life actually so on this day
um i’m carrying this giant tote on my
lap and i have this perfect
gorgeous system for how i arrange the
boxes and cartons
just right um and i know it looks
precarious to people
but totally routine to me i mean have
you ever felt this way you know you’re
in the middle of doing something that
maybe looks
super complicated or confusing or hard
to someone else but
really you’ve done it like a hundred
times so it’s as automatic as brushing
your teeth
that’s how grocery shopping feels to me
so on this particular day
i’ve already been asked by a few people
if they can help me and i’ve already
given a couple of like friendly
easy breezy no thank you i’ve got it
and i’ve made it all the way to my car
and i’m about to load my groceries
in when this man approaches me and he
asks if he can help and
once again i give this like warm decline
um but this guy responds a little
differently he takes a few steps back
he leans against the car next to mine
and folds his arms across his chest
and watches me
i assume so he can be at the ready when
i inevitably need that help that i’ve
already
warmly declined so i set to work with my
every
everyday routine and i’m taking the
wheels off of my chair and i’m throwing
them in the back seat of my car
and then i’m pulling the body of my
chair over me to sit in the passenger
seat
and while i’m doing this i can feel this
man watching me and my
hands are starting to shake and i can
feel this little
line of sweat start to pop over my upper
lip because
i have to show him that i’m fine but
he’s not buying it and
the faster i’m trying to move the more
i’m fumbling and suddenly i’m fumbling
at this very ordinary task that
i complete every week and i just can’t
seem to get this
tote up over my lap and into the car so
i do something that’s pretty rare for me
actually i break out of this
hyper-friendly
persona and i say could you please stop
staring at me you’re making me feel
really uncomfortable
and this man doesn’t say a word um but
he moves back
to the other side of the car maybe like
10 feet away
and continues to stand there
so now i’m taking these items out of my
tote and throwing them into the car so i
can just pull this through and finally
i’m able to lift the tote up and over
and i slam my car door shut and i drive
away
and i make it through like two lights
before
i just start crying
and i bring you to that story
not because it’s exceptional
but because it’s representative of so
many encounters i have with people when
i’m in public
i bring you that story because i think
it captures
something important about the way that
american culture seems to think about
two things kindness
and disability
as a disabled person i feel this
tight like almost inextricable link
between
these two ideas when my disabled body
moves through the world
i become like a magnet for quote-unquote
kindness
and it can look like a lot of different
things um people
running across a parking lot to open a
door for me
people approaching me in a coffee shop
or on the street to pray over me
from my healing people offering me money
when i’m
buying snacks at the gas station uh
people coming up from behind me and
pushing me up a long ramp
or even people taking my son out of my
arms
and buckling him into his car seat
all of this is meant as kindness i
really do believe
attempts to reach out to connect
to alleviate perceived suffering or
strain
it almost feels absurd to complain about
this right i mean who really complains
about
being money or a few prayers
but imagine this with me if you would
let’s say that you’re like walking
to school or work or
the bus stop and someone stops you with
this concerned
brow and says hang in there as they push
a couple bucks in your hand
what would that signal to you maybe i
must look a little haggard this morning
or
do i look like i need a meal or maybe
like imagine you’re walking up a long
flight of stairs and someone swoops you
up in their arms and carries you to the
top and
you don’t even know who they are you
didn’t see them coming maybe you’re
scared maybe you haven’t even had time
to think but when they drop you up at
the top
they give you this big smile and say
there you go
like maybe if that happened once or
twice in a lifetime it would feel like
this
funny fluke maybe but what if there was
a good shot that something like that
might happen
any time you left the house
and the truth is in my experience
these moments feel like the opposite of
human connection
they’re the opposite of helpful they’re
painful
actually because they affirm to me that
i’m like this
little symbol and a big story
playing out in someone else’s head and
that leaves me feeling
disempowered disconnected
and erased so that’s what i want to
explore with you
that tension between intention
and the actual experience of this
kind of kindness i’m a writer
and i write a lot about being disabled
but when i bring
these moments to readers like when i
call on
uh this kind of kindness into question
i’m consistently met with resistance
frustration like sometimes even
anger and this is interesting to me
like you might think that as a regular
recipient of kindness
these bears would be interested in the
results of these kind gestures right
but i think that we respond
instinctually with resistance
because we hold kindness
close to our hearts we reach for it
as a defining characteristic to ensure
that
we’re good people because
kindness offers hope to humankind
i feel all of those things too
but what if actual kindness
like the kind of kindness that does good
and feels good and makes tangible
difference
is more complicated than we like to
think
in order to understand this relationship
between disability and kindness
i think we have to hold back the lens a
little bit and look at larger patterns
so when we look at the stories being
told about disability
in film or in literature or in the news
or in charity
through charity fundraisers i think two
things really stand out
and one is that stories of disabilities
are overwhelmingly told from the
perspective of non-disabled people
and two the disabled person in that
story
whether they’re a fictionalized
character or a real human person
is consistently flattened into a
one-dimensional stereotype
they’re the hero or the victim and
they’re rarely portrayed as anything in
between
and these stories are embedded deeply in
our culture
and we love them i know we love them
because
we keep telling them and celebrating
them from
charles dickens creating the character
of tiny tim almost
200 years ago to the viral news story
about the cheerleader who asked the
disabled kid to prom
i mean these stories are often what we
call feel good stories
they’re that spot of sunshine in the
news that we can
look to and take a sigh of relief and
feel that
shred of hope for the human race i mean
why on earth would i want to take that
moment
of relief away from us that when you
peel back the glossy finish though
there are at least three glaring
problems with these kinds of stories
first they center the story around that
non-disabled person
and they reduce the disabled person to a
plot device i mean we’re watching
ebenezer scrooge the center of the story
transform under the inspiration of that
secondary character tiny tim
or we’re celebrating that cheerleader
for asking the disabled kid
to the prom the second thing is that
they
allow us to explore the big picture so
we’re so busy celebrating the
non-disabled person
that we don’t even think to talk about
the incapacitating
stigma at play when one person asking a
disabled kid to a dance is so
newsworthy and finally
they perpetuate stereotypes of disabled
people they flatten
vibrant complicated humans into
caricatures of helplessness or
sensational achieved in each way
disabled people are held at a great
distance from the rest of humanity
these stories are with us when we go out
into the world whether we’re thinking
about them or not
they’re shaping the way that we interact
with each other
at the part of the talk when people
start to throw their brows at me
and get uncomfortable and someone
inevitably says
what am i supposed to do are you saying
i’m not supposed to
offer a friendly hand i can’t open doors
for people
i do that for everyone what are the
rules here
and i think that’s a fair question and i
totally understand
this anxiety but first
i think it’s worth interrogating our
resistance
to complicating our understanding of
kindness like what does our current
understanding of kindness give us
and i’ve had to do some personal digging
here uh when i think about my own grip
on kindness and i’ve come to this
conclusion
when we’re granted access to the world
and the way that others aren’t
we often feel guilty
there’s a discomfort in watching someone
struggle when we experience ease
and we can alleviate some of that
discomfort that we’re feeling when we
reach out a hand and pull someone along
but i think that if our discomfort is
driving that interaction
we’re focusing on ourselves and not the
actual person
in front of us i think
a gut reaction can do more harm than
good
what form of kindness could give more
to the people around us now here’s what
i think
i think human beings are complicated and
human and communication
is nuanced the point here is
not to give you a set of rules to
memorize about how to interact with
disabled people
or any kind of people really i’ve heard
from
a lot of folks with invisible
disabilities actually who are met with
skepticism
when they ask for help because
apparently they don’t look the part of a
person who needs help
ultimately i think we all suffer
when human beings are reduced to symbols
in a story that we think we already know
instead i ask that we pay attention
to the human person in front of us to
de-program that part of our brains
that reduces humans to symbols that we
think we can interpret
slow down wait look
listen if you really if you really can’t
tell
if someone needs help or doesn’t need
help you can always ask
but whatever that person says and this
is important
listen and believe them and i’ll say
that again
if you want to be helpful if you want to
be genuinely kind you have to listen
we still might get things wrong
sometimes but my hope is that we don’t
let that discomfort of messing up
make us throw up our hands and leave the
conversation
i think i would be remiss if i if i
closed us out without talking about
what’s at stake here
i mean is this whole talk just this
giant overreaction to some uncomfortable
moments i’ve had in target parking lots
uh i’ve actually struggled to articulate
what’s at stake in this conversation for
most of
my life i mentioned that i’ve been a
wheelchair user for most of my life and
i’ve had moments like this
almost as long as i can remember um but
this last year
i gave birth to a son and i actually
have a picture of him
um to share with you because you gotta
get it look at this
um cute face i think you probably want
to kiss him
everybody wants to kiss him he has very
kissable cheeks this is a picture
from christmas this this last year just
like a month ago
or two uh in this room actually um
and i’ve been surprised by how much
clarity
my son has brought to my identity
as a disabled woman because in some ways
you know i’m i’m the same person i was
before i live in the same city i drive
the same car
the same stores and appointments and
people still rush to assist me in the
most mundane tasks
but now i’m doing all of that with this
vivacious baby boy
attached to me and
shortly after my son was born i was
watching this
virtual panel of disabled parents and a
disabled lawyer
talk about the experience of being a
disabled parent
and i learned that it’s legal
in many u.s states including the state
where i live
for a parent to lose custody of their
child simply because they have a
disability
no proof of neglect or abuse necessary
and um i found it really difficult to
breathe
as soon as i heard that um suddenly
being read as helpless has higher stakes
right suddenly i’m able to see how these
tiny interactions these tiny encounters
on the street
and in cafes and grocery stores
translate into the big picture
this is why i feel urgent because when
we
automatically and by default read
disabled people as
always helpless in need of our
benevolence
we’re not trusting them to be parents
we’re not hiring them in the leadership
positions we’re not
voting them to hold public office we’re
not choosing them as romantic partners
there is more at stake here than awkward
encounters
or even hurt feelings the stories we
tell
matter and while the stories that we re
receive shape the way we see the world
we actually have the power to tell
different stories
like anyone else disabled people are
capable
and need help our competence and needs
are unique
i don’t know that i would say disability
should be normalized exactly
but i do get i do feel uh urgency
um that we need to expand our notion of
what a vibrant
valuable life can look like what
an independent woman can look like what
a boss or a leader
can look like what a nurturing mother
can look like
a kindness that brings about meaningful
ease
and access will lead to sustainable
systemic empowering changes that make
the world more accessible
for more people when i think
about what gives me hope for the human
race it’s not this
old version of quote unquote kindness
when i think about what gives me hope
it’s
our tolerance our ability to tolerate
toler
tolerate the ambiguity of human
connection
and our resilience to grow and adapt
in our methods of caring for one another
thank you
you