**Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
In one of my favorite funny X-Files scenes, Agent Scully suggests to her paranormal-obsessed partner that what he's really after is not "the truth," but a white whale:
SCULLY: ...You know Mulder, you are Ahab.
MULDER: You know, it's interesting you should say that, because I've always wanted a peg leg. It's a boyhood thing I never grew out of. I'm not being flippant--I've given this a lot of thought. I mean, if you have a peg leg or hooks for hands then maybe it's enough to simply keep on living. You know, bravely facing life with your disability. But without these things you're actually meant to make something of your life, achieve something, earn a raise, wear a necktie. So if anything I'm actually the antithesis of Ahab, because if I did have a peg leg I'd quite possibly be more happy and more content not to be chasing after these creatures of the unknown.
I think the white whale for many of us (in Mulder's sense) is more or less the American Dream--and it really seems that elusive for many. Many of us see material security as a foundation of happiness, as the goal of politics, as the objective of work, and we go to mad lengths in its pursuit. But many dream of dropping out of that quest by striking it rich, many dream of running away and joining the circus, a religious order, or the bohemian counterculture, and Mulder's probably not the only one who realizes there are also advantages to having "a peg leg." I think that by dropping out of conventional work they're each asserting a privilege.
Having a disability can mean long-term physical and/or emotional pain. It can mean your deferred dreams shrivel up, or explode. It can mean being horribly at the mercy of "the system," of friends, family, and neighbors, of doctors and nurses and carers, of strangers who might be good Samaritans or might just pass you by, or might steal what you have left and kick you in the gut. It can also mean being humbled by great human kindness and generosity, which can even be painful to accept. We don't want to see our loved ones struggle under the burden of helping us, we don't want anybody to ever have to wipe our ass for us, and some of us don't really want our fellow citizens to have to cut us a disability check.
After a long period of paralysis, I've finally reapplied (I've been denied once) for Social Security Disability and SSI, for disability related to my brain injury. In doing that, I'm making a specific claim that I cannot work--not just that it's tough or I don't want to, but that I can't. I have a less obvious kind of disability, and the people around me have always been encouraging about my efforts to work--"you can do it!" For years I've tried mightily to tell myself the same thing, that surely with optimism and willpower and effort I can do it. And I've been morbidly embarrassed and brutally disappointed with myself when I've struggled and failed at jobs time and again. I finally got to the point where the prospect of trying again triggered terror and black depression. I went through therapy to try to change this, to push through, and it only got worse. I stepped back and did some serious thinking, and realized I had to respect my experience and instinct that no, I really couldn't work.
I wasn't sure whether others were going to agree with me, or how I would get by without working; I think I've been fortunate that everyone close to me has accepted the idea that I am disabled--I've been able to explain it to them, and they can see it for themselves. I'm the one who still seems to have the hardest time with it, I think because it seems like a privilege to me not to have to work and for my needs to be provided for anyway.
"In (Ahab's) mind, Moby Dick comes to represent all of the injustice in the world," says a study notes website. Leviathan is the name of one of the unmanageable beasts that God uses to utterly cow Job in his book of the Bible; as I understand it (I sheepishly confess I haven't read it... or Moby-Dick actually... but I really did see that X-Files episode), it's a story about just how damned unfair life is, and how life doesn't really owe us anything. Job's correct response to loss is not to vow to destroy the Leviathan, to endeavor to earn a raise or wear a necktie even if it kills him, but in Mulder's words, "to simply keep on living." And in the story, anyway, God comes through for Job.
And it nevertheless makes me very uncomfortable that "I'd quite possibly be more happy and more content" accepting disability. I mentioned that it seemed in a way like a privilege, and it makes sense to me to see that as also entailing a certain kind of obligation, to "make something of myself" in some other way, to serve and contribute as I am able. It's hardly as if a person with a peg leg is good for nothing.
So what's your effing problem? Head-hunter roommate? Crazy boss? Seasickness? Share what's on your mind tonight, or just listen to others' troubles and share some caring words.