Fully Alive by Timothy Shriver

Author:Timothy Shriver [Shriver, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429942799
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2014-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Tough World

“Maybe we should move to Washington,” Linda said one day, cracking open the door to a change of life.

We thought about what we’d be leaving behind and what we’d be gaining. We thought about the effect on our children, on our marriage, on our careers, and more. As we looked at the full picture, everything we could think of told us not to leave. We loved New Haven. Our children had been born there; most of our friends lived there. The kids I’d taught were scattered in virtually every neighborhood of the city, making it impossible to go anywhere without seeing a friendly face. My mentors were there, our church was there, our roots were there. But there was something—and someone (Loretta!)—that told us we needed to go. We decided to move.

Over the course of several weeks in the spring of 1996, we shared the news that we were leaving for Washington and taking up a new role in the Special Olympics movement full-time. What surprised me most about those conversations was the reaction most people had upon learning that I was going to be working for Special Olympics. “That’s so nice,” was the most common response. The word “nice” came up over and over again.

This irritated me immensely. There was something patronizing and dismissive about that word, and it was inaccurate. Whatever Special Olympics is, it isn’t “nice.” Nice isn’t about digging deep into the brokenness and healing of life. Nice isn’t about the centering intelligence that enables human beings to welcome one another with love. Nice isn’t about challenging the world to uproot deep and stubborn prejudices that destroy the lives of millions of people. My work in education had always been edgy, tough, confrontational, empowering. I saw Special Olympics the same way, but I realized others didn’t. Too many perceived it to be sweet—a break on a Saturday afternoon for “unfortunate” children. Sporting events on Saturday afternoons were indeed a big part of what Special Olympics did around the world, but that description failed miserably to capture the muscular and transformational and empowering moments that I was experiencing.

I saw this lack of understanding springing from discomfort with disability. It was—and is—something to be avoided. Like small children who shut their eyes to make a scary thing go away, many prefer not to look at it directly. If we hear that a neighbor has welcomed a child with a disability into the world, most are still likely to greet the news with discomfort or sadness: “I’m sorry.” Some even question why the baby was carried to term: “Didn’t they do a prenatal test?”

Almost immediately after starting at Special Olympics, I went on the road to meet with athletes, volunteers, and staff around the world. The first thing I found was that the world hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought. Injustice, brutality, indifference, and intolerance were still pervasive. But I also found an indomitable energy source: the parents of many of our athletes, who had learned that, in the words of Shakespeare, “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds.

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