I was angry at first. I was frustrated with the doctors and
with the Internet I had sought advice from and with my friends and with
everyone who had tried to help and give advice. I was furious with myself for
being reckless on my bike and for making the mistakes I did after that.
If only I had been given the pertinent information about
concussions from the beginning, this whole thing could have been avoided! If
only I had skipped jiujitsu that day, my life would be running along just fine!
If only I had been able to contact experienced friends and doctors earlier, I
would probably be out there running a marathon and have finished my dissertation
already!
However, another voice crept into my mind: You. Are. So. Privileged.
Sure, I didn’t have
access to good doctors or correct information about concussions for the first five
weeks after my concussion. But after that I had the resources and privilege to
return to the States for world-class medical care, which is something very few
people can say.
What about other people who don’t have access to information
or health care, and even if they did, could not have sought treatment? What
about those who suffer brain injuries as victims of war, police brutality,
domestic violence, or for the sake of voyeuristic entertainment (read: American
football and MMA)? What do they do?
I imagined the wives with heads slammed against the wall as
victims of domestic violence. The men whose heads are concussed from the police
bludgeon. The football players who have no other choice but to ram their heads
and necks into their opponents for the morbid enjoyment of spectators—fans who
will never know their pain, and who will never know the consequences of their
obsession with victory and gratuitous consumerism of the NFL. The fans who cheer when a
player goes down, not knowing that their enthusiasm is fueling a violent sport that
leaves untold victims in its wake.
Meanwhile, I could not deny my extreme privilege staring at
me in the face. I had the time, resources, money, and support to take time off
of work. What about those who are sick but cannot take a break? The mothers and
fathers, for example, working to feed their children--sewing shoes, assembling iPhones, picking
up trash, hoeing the fields, delivering cases of bottled water for 15 hours a
day—not because they want to, but because they have no other choice for survival.
During the acute stages of the injury, especially the first
two months, I couldn’t read much so I listened to audio books. At one point while I was
still in China, I listened the phenomenal and breath-taking masterpiece titled Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I
was standing in my kitchen preparing dinner when I heard these words from his
book, which is written as a letter to his 15-year old son (if you are living under a rock and don’t know who Ta-Nehisi Coates is, to understand the context of the
following quote note that he is a black man writing to his black son):
“I am sorry that I cannot make it okay. I am sorry that I
cannot save you—but not that sorry. Part of me thinks that your very
vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for
others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it. The fact is
that despite their [white people] dreams, their lives are also not inviolable. When
their own vulnerability becomes real—when the police decide that
tactics intended for the ghetto should enjoy wider usage, when their armed
society shoots down their children, when nature sends hurricanes against their
cities—they are shocked in a way that those of us who were born and bred
to understand cause and effect can never be. And I would not have you
live like them. You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at
your face and the hounds are always at your heels. And to varying degrees this
is true of all life. The difference is that you do not have the privilege of
living in ignorance of this essential fact.” Page 106-107
I love this quote and it rings so true, as it did for me
when I got a concussion: white people are so often shocked when their life is
threatened as if we’re not vulnerable to crises and death the way the rest of
the human race is.
Perhaps the white dream is to avoid suffering, to live a
life of ease, of smiles and rainbows and puppies and kittens and Instagram. But maybe
avoiding suffering is not what life is about. What if we’ve got it all wrong?
Maybe the meaning of life is to be found in our suffering, in our vulnerability and dependency on
others. For perhaps when we recognize our human vulnerability and depend on
others for help, comfort, and companionship, that is when our life has real
meaning.
I’m not saying I now understand what it’s like to be black, or to be a person of color. That
is a whole other level of fear and vulnerability that I will never know. I’m
saying that TNC’s words helped open up my eyes to the way we as white people
don’t truly know vulnerability--we don't experience continual threats on our bodies and our lives as a part of our everyday lives--and so we are often unaware of the fragility of our
existence, and perhaps in this way our lives are lacking in a major way. At
the same time, we live in a bubble of safety and imaginary vulnerability that our
white privilege affords us, giving us confidence but also shell-shocking us
when that bubble bursts.
On a day in China when I was feeling particularly sorry for
myself, I listened to a "Women of the Hour" podcast featuring a girl with cerebral palsy, which
instantly put my temporary illness into perspective: I would get better. Many
people do not get better. And she said something on the podcast that continues
to stick with me as I reflect on this experience:
“Disability is an inherent part of the human experience.”
And so, it is…for all of us. Whether we have an illness, an
injury, or a genetic trait, we all have something that doesn’t work perfectly.
Our weaknesses and disabilities are perhaps where our
greatest strengths and experiences come from.
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Readers of my blog know that vulnerability has been a theme
in my life for a long time. It’s only now that I realize a little more fully
that as a white, able-bodied person, I did not know true vulnerability until
the van collided with my body. And perhaps, that threat to my life was what I
needed most to wake up to my privilege, to wake up to my human vulnerability,
to realize the short moment in time that is our life, and perhaps to help me realize that, as
TNC said, our vulnerabilities bring us closer to the meaning of life as being
imbedded in our connections with others.
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