What do people think about the importance of rest and sleep for staying focused and energized while living with a disability? As the disability activist Annie Segarra mentioned in a Facebook post, laziness is a common charge leveled at disabled people. We are accused of living off the system, taking advantage of others, exaggerating our conditions - unless we are able to avoid suspicion by proving ourselves to be able-bodied despite our limitations.
I've found it essential to my sense of safety to really stand up for my right to rest and recuperate, regularly, relentlessly and as often as I feel the need. I've had to make the conscious choice to let go of others' expectations of what a human being should be, why human beings are valuable, and what makes us important. When facing as much marginalization and stigma as I am, I can't rely upon other people's metrics of what gives me the right to exist and take up space and resources.
I'm a firm believer in the reality that every human being is valuable and represents important potentialities for the collective that we all have the duty to process in a mindful way. As John Stuart Mill says in his seminal book On Liberty, if all of humanity believes one thing and one person believes differently, we are no more warranted in silencing that one person than that person, if they had the power, would be in silencing the rest of us. We don't have the right to devalue each other and our perspectives - instead, we must learn from each other and honor each other's processes.
In every human being's life, there are times of great productivity and times of illness and rest. Some humans have only five or ten years of productivity in an eighty-year lifespan, but they change the world. We simply cannot afford to dismiss each other's worth because we happen to be in a state of retreat and rest. Instead, we should embrace the process of healing and renewal and give each other every shred of space necessary to fully rejuvenate and find our way.
I've found it essential to my sense of safety to really stand up for my right to rest and recuperate, regularly, relentlessly and as often as I feel the need. I've had to make the conscious choice to let go of others' expectations of what a human being should be, why human beings are valuable, and what makes us important. When facing as much marginalization and stigma as I am, I can't rely upon other people's metrics of what gives me the right to exist and take up space and resources.
I'm a firm believer in the reality that every human being is valuable and represents important potentialities for the collective that we all have the duty to process in a mindful way. As John Stuart Mill says in his seminal book On Liberty, if all of humanity believes one thing and one person believes differently, we are no more warranted in silencing that one person than that person, if they had the power, would be in silencing the rest of us. We don't have the right to devalue each other and our perspectives - instead, we must learn from each other and honor each other's processes.
In every human being's life, there are times of great productivity and times of illness and rest. Some humans have only five or ten years of productivity in an eighty-year lifespan, but they change the world. We simply cannot afford to dismiss each other's worth because we happen to be in a state of retreat and rest. Instead, we should embrace the process of healing and renewal and give each other every shred of space necessary to fully rejuvenate and find our way.