I 'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired .
I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I 'm writing anything , but I 'd already finished editing the piece , and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word " disabled " to see what I 'd find .
Let me read you the entry .
" Disabled , " adjective : " crippled , helpless , useless , wrecked , stalled , maimed , wounded , mangled , lame , mutilated , rundown , worn-out , weakened , impotent , castrated , paralyzed , handicapped , senile , decrepit , laid-up , done-up , done-for , done-in cracked-up , counted-out ; see also hurt , useless and weak .
Antonyms , healthy , strong , capable . "
I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing , it was so ludicrous , but I just I 'd just gotten past mangled , and my voice broke , and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed .
You know , of course this is my raggedy old thesaurus .
I 'm thinking this must be an ancient print date , right .
But , in fact , the print date was the early 1980 's , when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me .
And , needless to say , thank God I wasn 't using a thesaurus back then .
I mean , from this entry , it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them , when , in fact , today I 'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured .
So , I immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition , expecting to find a revision worth noting .
Here 's the updated version of this entry .
Unfortunately , it 's not much better .
I find the last two words under " Near Antonyms " particularly unsettling , " whole " and " wholesome . "
So , it 's not just about the words .
It 's what we believe about people when we name them with these words .
It 's about the values behind the words , and how we construct those values .
Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people .
In fact , many ancient societies , including the Greeks and the Romans , believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful , because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence .
So , what reality do we want to call into existence , a person who is limited , or a person who 's empowered ?
By casually doing something as simple as naming a person , a child , we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power .
Wouldn 't we want to open doors for them instead ?
One such person , who opened doors for me , was my childhood doctor at the A.I. Dupont Institute in Wilmington , Delaware .
His name is Dr. Pizzutillo .
Italian American , whose name , apparently , was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce , so he went by Dr. P.
And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children .
I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital , with the exception of my physical therapy sessions .
I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick , elastic bands -- different colors -- you know , to help build up my leg muscles .
And I hated these bands more than anything .
I hated them , had names for them .
I hated them .
And , you know , I was already bargaining , as a five year-old child , with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises , unsuccessfully , of course .
And , one day , he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving , these sessions -- and he said to me , " Wow . Aimee , you are such a strong , powerful little girl , I think you 're going to break one of those bands .
When you do break it , I 'm going to give you a hundred bucks . "
Now , of course , this was a simple ploy on Dr. P 's part to get me to do the exercises I didn 't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five year-old in the second floor ward , but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me .
And I have to wonder today , to what extent his vision , and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl , shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong , powerful and athletic person well into the future .
This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child .
But , in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries , our language isn 't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want , the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable .
Our language hasn 't caught up with the changes in our society , many of which have been brought about by technology .
Certainly , from a medical standpoint , my legs , laser surgery for vision impairment , titanium knee and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities , and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them , not to mention social networking platforms , allow people to self-identify , to claim their own descriptions of themselves , so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing .
So , perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth , that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society , and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset .
The human ability to adapt , it 's an interesting thing , because people have continually wanted to talk to me about overcoming adversity , and I 'm going to make an admission .
This phrase never sat right with me , and I always felt uneasy trying to answer people 's questions about it , and I think I 'm starting to figure out why .
Implicit in this phrase of overcoming adversity , is the idea that success , or happiness , is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience , as if my successes in life have come about from an ability to sidestep or circumnavigate the presumed pitfalls of a life with prosthetics , or what other people perceive as my disability .
But , in fact , we are changed .
We are marked , of course , by a challenge , whether physically , emotionally or both . And I am going to suggest that this is a good thing .
Adversity isn 't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life .
It 's part of our life .
And I tend to think of it like my shadow .
Sometimes I see a lot of it , sometimes there 's very little , but it 's always with me .
And , certainly , I 'm not trying to diminish the impact , the weight , of a person 's struggle .
There is adversity and challenge in life , and it 's all very real and relative to every single person , but the question isn 't whether or not you 're going to meet adversity , but how you 're going to meet it .
So , our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity , but preparing them to meet it well .
And we do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel that they 're not equipped to adapt .
There 's an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I 'm disabled .
And , truthfully , the only real and consistent disability I 've had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions .
In our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold , hard truth about their medical prognosis , or , indeed , a prognosis on the expected quality of their life , we have to make sure that we don 't put the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone .
Perhaps the existing model of only looking at what is broken in you and how do we fix it , serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself .
By not treating the wholeness of a person , by not acknowledging their potency , we are creating another ill on top of whatever natural struggle they might have .
We are effectively grading someone 's worth to our community .
So we need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability .
And , most importantly , there 's a partnership between those perceived deficiencies and our greatest creative ability .
So it 's not about devaluing , or negating , these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug , but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity .
So maybe the idea I want to put out there is , not so much overcoming adversity , as it is opening ourselves up to it , embracing it , grappling with it , to use a wrestling term , maybe even dancing with it .
And , perhaps , if we see adversity as natural , consistent and useful , we 're less burdened by the presence of it .
This year we celebrate 200th birthday of Charles Darwin , and it was 150 years ago , when writing about evolution , that Darwin illustrated , I think , a truth about the human character .
To paraphrase , it 's not the strongest of the species that survives , nor is it the most intelligent that survives , it is the one that is most adaptable to change .
Conflict is the genesis of creation .
From Darwin 's work , amongst others , we can recognize that the human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit through conflict into transformation .
So , again , transformation , adaptation , is our greatest human skill .
And , perhaps , until we 're tested , we don 't know what we 're made of .
Maybe that 's what adversity gives us , a sense of self , a sense of our own power .
So , we can give ourselves a gift .
We can re-imagine adversity as something more than just tough times .
Maybe we can see it as change .
Adversity is just change that we haven 't adapted ourselves to yet .
I think the greatest adversity that we 've created for ourselves is this idea of normalcy .
Now , who 's normal ?
There 's no normal .
There 's common .
There 's typical .
There 's no normal .
And would you want to meet that poor , beige person if they existed ?
I don 't think so .
If we can change this paradigm from one of achieving normalcy to one of possibility , or potency , to be even a little bit more dangerous , we can release the power of so many more children , and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with the community .
Anthropologists tell us that the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is to be of use , to be able to contribute .
There 's evidence that Neanderthals , 60,000 years ago , carried their elderly and those with serious physical injury , and , perhaps , because the life experience of survival of these people proved of value to the community : they didn 't view these people as broken and useless ; they were seen as rare and valuable .
A few years ago , I was in a food market in the town where I grew up in that red zone in northeastern Pennsylvania , and I was standing over a bushel of tomatoes .
It was summer time . I had shorts on .
I hear this guy , his voice behind me say , " Well , if it isn 't Aimee Mullins . "
And I turn around , and it 's this older man .
I have no idea who he is .
And I said , " I 'm sorry , sir , have we met ?
I don 't remember meeting you . "
He said , " Well , you wouldn 't remember meeting me .
I mean , when we met I was delivering you from your mother 's womb . "
Oh , that guy .
And , but of course , actually , it did click .
This man was Dr. Kean , a man I had only known about through my mother 's stories of that day , because , of course , typical fashion , I arrived late for my birthday by two weeks .
An so , my mother 's prenatal physician had gone on vacation , so the man who delivered me was a complete stranger to my parents .
And , because I was born without the fibula bone , and had feet turned in , and a few toes in this foot , and a few toes in that , he had to be the bearer , this stranger had to be the bearer of bad news .
He said to me , " I had to give this prognosis to your parents that you would never walk , and you would never have the kind of mobility that other kids have or any kind of life of independence , and you 've been making liar out of me ever since . "
The extraordinary thing is that he said he had saved newspaper clipping throughout my whole childhood , whether it was winning a second grade spelling bee , marching with the Girl Scouts , you know , the Halloween parade , winning my college scholarship , or any of my sports victories , and he was using it , and integrating it into teaching resident students , med students from Hahnemann medical school and Hershey medical school .
And he called this part of the course the X Factor , the potential of the human will .
No prognosis can account for how powerful this could be as a determinant in the quality of someone 's life .
And Dr. Kean went on to tell me , he said , " In my experience , unless repeatedly told otherwise , and even if given a modicum of support , if left to their own devices , a child will achieve . "
See , Dr. Kean made that shift in thinking .
He understood that there 's a difference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it .
And there 's been a shift in my thinking over time , in that , if you had asked me at 15 years old , if I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs , I wouldn 't have hesitated for a second .
I aspired to that kind of normalcy back then .
If you ask me today , I 'm not so sure .
And it 's because of the experiences I 've had with them , not in spite of the experiences I 've had with them .
And , perhaps , this shift in me has happened because I 've been exposed to more people who have opened doors for me than those who have put lids and cast shadows on me .
See , all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power , and you 're off .
If you can hand somebody the key to their own power , the human spirit is so receptive , if you can do that and open a door for someone at a crucial moment , you are educating them in the best sense .
You 're teaching them to open doors for themselves .
In fact , the exact meaning of the word educate comes from the root word " educe . "
It means , to bring forth what is within , to bring out potential .
So again , which potential do we want to bring out ?
There was a case study done in 1960 's Britain , when they were moving from grammar schools to comprehensive schools .
It 's called the streaming trials . We call it tracking here in the States .
It 's separating students from A , B , C , D and so on .
And the A students get the tougher curriculum , the best teachers , etc .
Well , they took , over a three month period , D level students , gave them A 's , told them they were A 's , told them they were bright .
And at the end of this three month period , they were performing at A level .
And , of course , the heartbreaking , flip side of this study , is that they took the A students and told them they were D 's .
And that 's what happened at the end of that three month period .
Those who were still around in school , besides the people who had dropped out .
A crucial part of this case study was that the teachers were duped too .
The teachers didn 't know a switch had been made .
They were simply told these are the A students , these are the D students .
And that 's how they went about teaching them and treating them .
So , I think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit , a spirit that 's been crushed doesn 't have hope .
It doesn 't see beauty .
It no longer has our natural , childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine .
If instead , we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope , to see beauty in themselves and others , to be curious and imaginative , then we are truly using our power well .
When a spirit has those qualities , we are able to create new realities and new ways of being .
I 'd like to leave you with a poem by a fourteenth-century Persian poet named Hafiz that my friend , Jacques Dembois told me about .
And the poem is called " The God Who Only Knows Four Words . "
" Every child has known God , not the God of names , not the God of don 'ts , but the God who only knows four words and keeps repeating them , saying , come dance with me "
Come dance with me .
Thank you .