Anyone close to me knows how much running means to me. What it’s done for me and to me over my forty something years. Lately, the barometer or something else has sent my left leg into a troubled period. I’ve been a lot of pain, and consequently, depression.
This video, apparently student made for Addidas and rejected, moved me. It’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the aged. I think that the glory day’s angle on the story told herein is nice, but less fitting.
“If you look into the eyes of a person that you discriminate against or that you think is so different than you that they deserve less rights than you then it becomes almost impossible to deny their humanity. The complicated part of that is — and I’m not trying to say that we are all the same — what I’m trying to say is we are all completely different, and that’s the beauty of it.”
-iO Tillett Wright
This interview was an incredible insight in my opinion. I found it almost right after watching a pair of “Trumpettes” extolling the god-like virtues of their favorite demagog so that you can imagine I was a little upset. Then I got to this part:
“The most dignified gift you can give them as a human, as part of their family, as part of their family-of-friends is the right to change.”
The scope of this statement is so broad, so much impact and truth. iO hit this one out of the park.
Recently, I was just interviewed for a radio show and one of the things we talked about was my belief that you cannot be a contemporary reader who doesn’t read science fiction. Rationally, it’s an impossibility. Even if you’re scanning the virtual pages of your Kindle, engrossed in a pre-historical treatise, you’re reading science fiction. You’re living it.
I bring this up because there have been so many instances since I became a full-time wordsmith that I’ve been asked, “What do you write?” Sometimes people show genuine curiosity, but all too often the response I hear is, “Oh, I don’t read science fiction.” Yes. Yes you do, and that should inspire you, is what I think.
I have friends who have been diagnosed with MS. I was born and raised in a place with a high incidence of the disease and I’ve watched vibrant, active and helpless people as their own immune systems eat them from the inside out. As little as 10 years ago, the idea that there would be a therapy to reverse this disease and return them all to full and productive lives was little more than fantasy. Back then, for them, we had some synthetic chemical treatments — their working mechanics a complete unknown — and a comfortable, lonely spot in an assisted living facility.
But, oh, the breakthroughs! Today, we’re on the threshold of rebuilding damaged neural tissues. Think about that for a moment, let it sink in. Despite what the standardized media outlets would have you believe, there is hope. We can fix inequity, right injustice, live together, and discover happiness. We just need the imagination to peer into that future.
Fire + Ice from Cojo Films on Vimeo.
Quite possibly for me more than you. But yeah, who wants to run Iceland with me?
This gets me going. Apparently, my weird is different sort of sauce.
Reminder: Embrace ever last drop of your weirdness.
