I have to admit I’ve never felt much buy-in when it comes to the idea of inspiration, or at least the inspiration business. What was the phrase Eisenhower coined? The military-industrial complex? Call this the inspiration-motivational complex. There is, really, a large industry built upon motivating one group of people to be inspired by another. This has real and often unfortunate consequences and one of them is an unintended victimization. This TED talk illustrates exactly what I’m talking about.
That video was one of the reasons why, when I was invited to deliver a TED talk of my own, I went to great lengths to make sure that it was not an “inspirational” speech. I invite you to judge for yourself whether or not I succeeded. Spoiler alert: I personally think it was a draw.
I do think inspiration is occasionally a useful starting point for action, but let’s not allow the inspirational tail to wag the actionable dog. positive action can spring from so many sources, and inspiration may not always be the best springboard.
Where do I get my inspiration, then? Or, do I live in an inspiration free zone? Not exactly. Like most useful inspiration, mine comes from the people who are most like me. When I was a working journalist, inspiration, by necessity, came from other reporters. As a photographer, I naturally look at the work of people like the great Lisa Kristine, and other like her, to see what they catch in their worldview that I have not. Heck, even when I was learning the in’s and out’s of a local Baskin-Robbins job as an ice cream jockey, I wanted to learn how on earth my 17 year old coworker on the Saturday shift managed to use a paper cup instead of the metal canister in the shake machine without slicing the cup to shreds. Hey, you take inspiration where it’s relevant on the road to improvement.
Today as a visually impaired filmmaker, it comes from… Well, not necessarily other visually impaired filmmakers (I know of very few others in that particular subset), but from other visually impaired folk who regard this particular impairment as an inconvenience rather than an obstacle. Which is, I think, as it should be. Our inspiration most often arrives from people who are facing or who have faced similar challenges and who succeed because that experience is relevant to the task at hand. To transmute the phrase, inspiration should result in perspiration. If it doesn’t, it’s just another shiny toy that eventually dulls with time.
And as usual,, I digress.My feelings on inspiration for inspiration’s sake are pretty straightforward: if what you’re doing happens to inspire someone along the way, call it found money, both for you and for them.
That’s why, as what amounts to my summer reading tour continues, I’d like to recommend three books that, in my opinion, are not about disability, although they are about disabled people. I also think they are not about inspiration, but that may be a debatable point, especially since I have in fact been inspired by them. I should also note that I will not be using the word “disabled” from this point forward in the post. Regular followers know my feelings on the matter, that the word “disabled” is not an accurate term to describe anyone with a physical or cognitive handicap. If a car is disabled, it has been rendered inoperable. People with physical or cognitive handicaps are not inoperable. They work fine with the tools they have. I’ve said I prefer the older, less fashionable word “”handicapped,”” if only because I think about the word the same way I think about its use in a sport like golf. When a person succeeds with a. handicap, it means they are succeeding by leveling the playing field in order to prioritize skill and training, and that is most often what people with handicaps want – a level playing field.
As the post title suggests, I find these books great reads because they answer the central questions about handicaps… What’s it like and how do you make it work? As I’ve navigated my own path along what can seem like a very dimly lit road (literally and figuratively), they are books which have been valuable companions to me, not because they are classically inspirational but because they are perspirational. They answer questions, often in painstaking detail about the practicalities of being visually impaired. Being visually impaired does not come with a how-to guide. These books are as close as you get. If you’re visually impaired and wonder how it works – daily life, I mean – you, my friend can and should find inspiration here, because there are answers on these pages. If you are not visually impaired, I urge you to read these books as well, because they will answer different questions, but will also light a path for you. You’ll walk a mile, climb a mountain or blaze a trail in these people’s shoes.
Let’s dive in.
Essential Reading Selection #1: Touch the Top Of The World, by Erik Weihenmayer
This should be at the top of your list. Weihenmayer has written three books now, but this one is his first, so there’s a lot of biography wrapped up within this book about how he took on the seven summits as a visually impaired climber. As with any first book that’s in large part biography, there’s a lot of exposition here, a lot of “how did we get here?” in the mix.
That’s OK. I first found this book when I was less than six months out from charting these new waters that included visual impairment. There are so many nuggets of useful and practical advice for someone new to the world of visual impairment that I sometimes think the book should be sold in the how-to section of your Barnes and Noble. I’m pretty sure Weihenmayer didn’t mean it this way, and was using these examples of how he retrofitted his life in order to work smoothly and competently as a blind teenager and beyond, but it was the first time I got ideas, real ideas about how to move eyesight down to a lower and even negligible rung on the ladder of tools to use to navigate the world. I’ve thanked Erik personally for this book, but everyone should.
Along the way,, it’s also one helluva good tarn. Erik has scaled el Capitan, succeeded in the real world as an elementary school teacher and just lives the same life of aspiration that anyone would pursue, given the chance. You get a real sense of Erik’s personality and inner thoughts (more than I think he meant to, to be honest, but it’s there in between the liens). His writing sets a tone that primes you for the availability of adventure and discovery.
Essential Reading Selection #2: Crashing Through, by Robert Kurson
He was an analyst for the CIA. He started his own technology business. He’s a world class downhill skier. He was also completely blind. I have to use the word “was” because the book is about how a breakthrough surgery restored eyesight to a man who had been blind since he was a very small child. There is an incredibly rich story here, and the surprising moral is “be careful what you wish for.” I was not expecting that, and it’s a story anyone who is blind should consider when they drift into a wistful or worse, angry mood when they consider the loss of what is always considered the most critical sense. This book not only has great tips for people who wonder just how a blind man works with circuit boards and engineering equipment (not to mention black diamond runs on the slopes). It explains what exactly happens when the brain tries to rewire itself in order to accommodate a new sense.
Essential Reading Selection #3: A Sense Of The World, by Jason roberts
I’ve written about this book before, but it deserves a mention in this post as well. This is a biography of nineteenth century explorer James Holman, who just happens to have been blind. The list of his accomplishments is long and noteworthy. The story about how he came to accept his blindness, learn new skills and take on challenges of travel and exploration when this was an avocation that would stymie even the fully sighted is a ripping yarn. As a visually impaired filmmaker traveling the world, I have a special interest in this tale. the journeys of a solo blind traveler who made so much of it up as he went along gives me ideas almost two hundred years after Holman first set out to circumnavigate the planet. Holman was an acknowledged expert on world travel, a best selling author and a fantastic sigh, inspiration when it comes to advice on handling the naysayers who say some dreams should be indefinitely deferred.
The thing is, I get it. Most people won’t read these books the way I do – scouring them for clues and innovative ideas about how to find workarounds that make visual impairment fade into background noise. Still, I urge you to give it a shot. Read these books as I do, if you can, because they do a great job when it comes to turning that inspiration into action. and that’ when inspiration dos what it’s supposed to do.
