Kevin DavyToday I received an email notification that my application for a blue badge (what we call a disability parking permit, in the UK) has been successful. This made me very happy. Although why, is a little complex.
The most obvious and main reason was that I know from my experience of transporting people with one, just how much it will make my life easier. No more hunting for a car parking space within range of my even being able to get somewhere. Or the spoon cost of not being able to find one and having to change my plans. The ease of being, more often than not, just outside the entrance. Not to mention that it is often free parking.
But there was also a secondary element. Which was that it felt validating. I'm not saying that I want to be disabled, or the way I am. But, having something like this kind of confirm just how disabled I am, somehow makes it more real. Not always a good thing. But, in this case, it felt like a confirmation of what I knew, but had room to doubt. Was I making too much of it, was I wrong to see myself as disabled as I thought I was? My mind, and I suspect not just mine, works this way.
But then, simply put, it's often easier to doubt ourselves and believe others, than the reverse. Perhaps that's because we are simply human. Social creatures, even if only in our way, that rely on the feedback and reassurance of others. Perhaps it is a deeper society indoctrination that runs so deep it may never be overcome entirely and when we are not thinking about it, we look outwards for the external verification that we have been taught is the only true authority, even though we know ourselves far better than anyone else can.
Or perhaps it's because of the one thing most of us have been taught through our lives. That what we know in our hearts is true about ourselves and the world we live in, never is. That we are always wrong, never right.
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