I was on the tube, holding my cane, when a homeless man entered the carriage and began to tell his story; He was 19, with no family to speak of, and he desperately needed money for a bed for the night to help him on his way to build the life he wanted.





He then looked around the carriage to see if anyone would offer him any of their spare change. As his eyes met mine, i apologised

“I’m sorry, i don’t have any cash!”





His eyes met my cane and without hesitation he replied

“I wouldn’t expect anything from you anyway”

…

…

…

I waited but it wasn't a joke.

expect nothing from me? why not? why is it ok for him to expect change from the other passengers, but i am excluded from this group?





Now, i'm going to go out on a limb here and hazard a guess….. . It’s because i’m blind!

So you know, that automatically means many other things are true.

For example, my life is really hard, a struggle in fact, clearly much worse than being homeless at 19. Poor, poor me. I couldn’t possibly be capable of helping someone else because i must spend all my energy worrying about my own awful existence. Never mind the fact I'm an extremely capable individual, that's not important here, because I couldn't possibly be considered equal to my fellow passengers.





So this highlights something REALLY important.

If a homeless man, begging for money sees my white stick and immediately imagines my life to be a largely negative experience….(either enough of a struggle that he wouldn’t feel right accepting my spare change, or outright worse than being homeless in central London), does everyone? Is the visual representation of my disability enough to define me as the most pitiable member of society? but it's ok, because it's not my fault...



How can blind and disabled people accept their abilities and learn to work with the tools they’ve got (Other very cool and useful senses and an interesting logic and perspective developed over the years) - becoming educated, resourceful, useful and contributing members of society if society itself tells them they don’t belong there; they are not equal; they are struggling, they SHOULD be struggling.

“Having an easy day? Well, you shouldn’t be, remember, your eyes are broken and it's not ok to be ok with that"

Can you think of anything to put you in your place more than a struggling man that wouldn’t accept your help?



