Wow! This Friday morning I once again meet with about seven Executive Directors of Independent Living Centers for people with dissabilities. We have met for the last six months to look at what they can do to be more successful in impacting their communities and the clients they serve. We have spent hours looking at how we determine what constitutes a person with dissabilities, and what does not. As they have defined it thus far, I feel like I am in that client line. . .and I bet you would as well.

It is amazing how all of us resist the qualifying of ourselves as people of dissabilities. This does not play well in the prevailing world that we live in. This is either far too honest for most, or exposing a weakness that in the end will impede our opportunities. Thus we create a spin that speaks of our lives as being far from having any real weaknesses.

I sent out an email to one of my clients yesterday and stated that I had received some not so flattering feedback on him as a person and as a professional. I knew that these words would provoke his own inner agony. I knew that this would trigger a down and in movement within his own inner world. As predicted, his first response was one of fatigue and despair. He seemed to be living for the day when this kind of labeling would end.

I get that frustration and hope that I observed in my client. We want to believe that we can find a place where public or private looks of askance will go away. We want to be perceived and engaged with as people who are free from discrimination and mere tolerance. It is painful and ugly deep within ourselves, as well as within the world, whenever there is mere management of our inabilities versus acceptance and love for who we are and what we can offer today.

Ramps and adjusted furniture are tangible expressions of an initiative, but real success in our communities, and yes in our lives, will be when we see the playing field as flat - not that everyone is the same, but that everyone is equal in value, and that everyone experiences equal opportunity.