Sarasota SCI Support Group

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Clint Chapman's first post:

 Do you dance in the rain?

First, let me say I’m not a blogger!  But the empty space on our new website seemed to be calling out to me.

While I’m not an experienced blogger, I live in a family “nest of bloggers”.  My wife, two daughters and even my six year old grandson all have their own blogsites.  So maybe their talent will rub off on my first post here.

Recently there was an article in our ever shrinking Sarasota newspaper about a presentation made by ABC News correspondent and author Cokie Roberts discussing her new book “Ladies of Liberty”.  She had a quote that was absolutely magnificent and I think worthy of being an official slogan for our group.  She said “life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain”.  How profound!  I know this applies to everyone, but somehow it seemed to be personally directed to me and possibly to many of you who have also experienced unexpected events that have that have significantly redirected your lives.

To me, “dancing in the rain” means grabbing with gratitude our many abilities so that we enjoy full and positive lives.  Whereas, life concentrated on a disability is the equivalent of “waiting for the storm to pass”.  Sometimes I think that our society and our culture expect or maybe even encourage people with disabilities to “wait out the storm”.  Personally I’d rather “dance”.            

Every single person has abilities AND disabilities --- they just differ in nature and degree from one person to the next.  Unfortunately, some fail to recognize this as a continuum of differences and persist to group classify individuals as either able-bodied or disabled.  This leads to a mentality of “able-bodied” means you “can” and therefore “disabled” means “you can’t”!  So I think we should reject this restricted and flawed concept!   

I don’t know of anyone anywhere who is devoid of some talent or ability so let’s all invest extra energy on what we can do and give less attention to our share of limitations.    Take advantage of the SCI Support Group and all available resources including adaptive equipment and devices.  (Note: Isn’t it curious that even “regular” sports equipment [clubs, balls, racquets, bikes, water equipment, etc.] that have been designed, modified and built to improve performance is never referred to as “adaptive”?)  

Let’s get on with writing that blog, riding that bike, tackling that computer, taking that trip, playing that sport or whatever it takes to learn how to “dance in the rain”.