Impaired Perceptions

I have recently been asked to speak about my ImpairedPerceptions work at a middle school as a part of their advisement program.  The main goal of the advisement program is to put an end to bullying, and to promote tolerance towards people that one perceives to be different from him or herself.  When I started Impaired Perceptions I was creating work to speak up for myself.  As I progressed in the project it became about standing up for people with all kinds of physical impairments.  I like many of my peers began creating work that spoke about the experiences of the group of people that I most related to in terms of life experience. 

It’s an odd thing each on of us is unique.  There have never been two people who were exactly alike, but we believe in the existence of normality.  Each person is as one of a kind as his or her fingerprint.  Have you ever heard of a person having an odd fingerprint?  However, as unique as we are there have never been two people who were completely different.  No matter how different someone might seem if you sat down, and talked to that person long enough you would eventually discover that you had something’s in common with him or her.  Even if you did not agree with them on hardly anything if you genuinely tried to empathize you would see yourself in their story in some kind of way.  It isn’t the differences and similarities that divide or unite us.  It is the importance and spin that we put on our differences and similarities that create our walls and bonds. 

Imagine a society where people with protruding belly buttons could only eat in restaurants, and use restrooms that were separate from those with belly buttons that stayed in.  What if we banned marriage between left-handed people?  Does this sound ridiculous to you?  It should, but what is more ridiculous the suggestion or how familiar it sounds?  Our uniqueness is our common bond, and should not be used as an instrument of division.  Some may perceive differences as a threat, but the best way to protect your own freedom and acceptance is to stand up for someone else’s.  If we leave the determination of who is acceptable or normal to human judgment our acceptance in society rests not on whom we are, but rather on who is making the call.  When we stand up for someone’s right to be accepted for who they are, we are not just standing up for that person and the group with whom we associate them; we are standing up for everyone.