The Priceless Gift of Weakness

When I was a kid, one of the absolute worst things I could be was "weak."

Not because I personally had much issue with it - or much choice in the matter, generally - but because that was something that would invariably invite the harshest, most emotionally violent punishment and rejection from the people around me, both young and old.

Despite being a girl, I was supposed to become a Strong Young Man, someday, or so their story went; and as such, it was somehow imperative that anything resembling "weakness" be purged from my existence - using any form of harm necessary. To many of the adults in my world, it was considered something of a moral imperative to do this to me. To most of my peers, it was a part of their own process of becoming the people their parents wanted them to be - and, therefore, a violence they readily and willingly passed on to me, in an attempt to stay on the "right side" of their own upbringings and elders.

I am now in my late 30s, and disabled.

There are a few things that I am profoundly, deeply, and intensely grateful for, in my life today - which, make no mistake, is often remarkably difficult and fraught with brutal daily struggles. But I think, at this moment in my life, the thing I cherish the most is my weakness.

This is not a thought I am "supposed" to say. I will no longer get shoved into the ground by a bully for saying it, or slapped by an angry parent. Nobody is going to assault my body for saying such things. But society constantly assaults my heart, my relationships, and my very soul. I am not "weak enough" to deserve help, by the standards of the society I live in; but I am too weak to actually sustain myself alone. I am no longer certain if I will ever be able to have a "regular" job again. I am completely certain that I will get absolutely no assistance from any kind of governmental or charitable institution; I "obviously" don't "need" it. Like countless millions of others, I am invisibly disabled, an experience that comes with a peculiar kind of alienation and interpersonal violence all its own.

The society around me, by and large, is one of unexamined ableism - the prejudiced set of beliefs that being capable is inherently superior to being incapable. Day to day life - even for someone who, like me, is basically house-bound and mostly exists on the Internet - is absolutely riddled with scenarios where someone has decided that I am unworthy, undeserving, and should be rejected because of something or other I inherently cannot do. And to deem a person less-than, to violate the very humanity of someone, because of something that is literally impossible to change... that is a truly twisted kind of hatefulness.

And every inch of the world I live in is dripping with it.

Most days, this reality is upsetting. I move back and forth, between various blends of anger, fear, frustration, anxiety, desperate loneliness, and a yawning chasm of heartache that believes that nobody will ever care enough to keep me alive. My situation is precarious, but only in the long term. I am not an "emergency" right now, and in a world where existential emergencies are a daily occurrence, what hope could I ever have that anyone will prioritize me?

There is a despair and an isolation to all this that genuinely takes a toll on me, more days than not. As if I needed more things to struggle with.

So why... how... how the fuck could I call this a gift? This thing, which I am punished for having, which brings so much fear and pain and stress into my existence?

How could weakness possibly be my most prized possession?

To answer this, I need to bring in another element of the overculture of white supremacy that we live under: individualism.

This ideology, put simply, states that people - "individuals" - are self-contained, fully-autonomous beings. The notion is that our worth is contingent on how much we do by and for ourselves. This goes hand in hand with ableism; the less capable one is, the less they can be "worth" as an "individual."

Individualism is one of the most profoundly dehumanizing inventions of all forms of oppression. Many kinds of hatefulness and oppressive behavior are rooted in scorn for specific differences; but individualism, unlike the rest, assaults all people equally by insisting that our connections to each other are somehow secondary. It claims that our value, our humanity, comes from what we do by ourselves, and nothing else. We're only worth what we would be capable of in a perfect vacuum.

But the reality is that nothing exists in a vacuum.

We are who we are because of who we are with.

Our relationships, our connections, our interactions - with both other people, and the world in general - are an enormous component of who we become in the course of our lives. Under the social conditioning of individualism, we are taught to believe that if we do the right things, at the right times, and have the right qualities and accomplishments, then we will be rewarded with good relationships. The truth is quite the opposite: when we prioritize good relationships, we will do the right things, we will act at the right times, we will develop better qualities, and we will accomplish wonderful things.

This is a truth that is deeply central to many of the Indigenous societies of Turtle Island, the place where I was born and now reside. It is a truth that is deeply beautiful, profoundly powerful, and utterly terrifying to the many generations of colonial-imperial invaders that continue to suppress those Indigenous cultures here, even today.

I am firmly convinced that this is a truth that is essential to the creation of a better world than the slowly unraveling hell we all exist in now.

When we understand ourselves from an individualistic perspective, weakness is a liability - something to be ashamed of, something to avoid, something to wish we didn't have, something to spurn and reject in the interests of "survival of the fittest" (which is, itself, a deeply ableist mischaracterization of how biological evolution actually works).

But when we understand our existence as collective - as fundamentally, unavoidably, inextricably interwoven with each and everyone else on this planet - a new possible concept of weakness can emerge.

When I was a kid, I spend a fair amount of time putting together jigsaw puzzles. I loved the process of gradually understanding the larger picture, of finding just the right place for each piece, of getting to recognize the way that all the small and random-seeming elements came together to form a bigger, more complete context.

When I think about weakness now, I imagine a puzzle piece - some protruding, lumpy "connectors" on an edge or two, perhaps; and on other edges, open, concave "sockets" that seem to dig into and be cut away from the shape of the piece itself.

Individualistic understanding would consider those connecting protrusions and call them "strength." These are more than the average expected shape of the piece, and therefore "good." Meanwhile, the sockets are thought of as "weakness" - as deficiency, as something missing, something wrong. There is less piece, there, and therefore it is a failure or a flaw of the piece itself. A piece with four sockets, one on each side of its overall rectangular shape, would be the most deficient and pathetic piece of all - the very embodiment of weakness.

And if all we ever think about is the piece in isolation, this illusion is very convincing indeed.

On the other hand, a collective understanding can regard that exact same puzzle piece, and discern something quite different. Among all the pieces in the box, only one has the exact right connector to match a given socket; the supposed "strength" of that connector means absolutely nothing without a matching socket to connect with! A piece with four sockets is a prize - something that can imbue meaning and purpose and contextual belonging to four other pieces in total! What a delightful, wondrous property!

Even the study of psychology as defined and practiced under white supremacy's anti-culture has consistently concluded that our relationships matter more than technical skills, occupations, degrees, awards, or even money. There are entire realms of therapy that operate on the understanding that our greatest fulfillment as people comes from feeling like we have something to offer the world around us. Individualism serves to make this very difficult to attain; we must pile up a huge collection of "strengths," all on our own (and potentially erasing the contributions of everyone else along the way) to be considered deserving of recognition. We are pushed to "make something of ourselves" as the supposed path to a meaningful and satisfying life.

But if we instead learn to embrace a more collective understanding of ourselves, we realize that there is a much easier path available, to all of us, at any time.

Our strengths mean nothing, without someone who wants to connect with us. We find our fulfillment by offering our strength to those who do not have it.

But what of us who are weak? Who have no strength to offer? Are we doomed to meaningless, joyless, tepid, empty lives? Are we better off numbed out, medicated into oblivion, or even dead - as ableism and individualism and eugenics would have us believe?

I think not.

I think the weakest of us have the truest path to our own fulfillment - because it is us, the most vulnerable, the most fragile, those in most dire need of help just to exist, who can offer the most opportunity for fulfillment to those who have the capacity to offer it.

We are not full of "holes." We are not "missing" anything. We are not "deficient" or "lacking" or "incorrect." We may, indeed, experience tremendous pain and suffering on account of our weaknesses. But we also carry with us, everywhere we go, an invitation for those around us to let love, care, and kindness flow through them. We are not here in the world, by ourselves and "incomplete" - we are the conduit by which many of us can find more completeness - together.

I, like many others, need help to survive. There are things I can do for others as well - but only on a limited basis. The more support I get, the more I can do those things. We all reinforce each other. We are all more alive, more fulfilled, and closer than ever to happiness, freedom, and justice... when we learn to embrace the generous act of offering our weakness to each other.

And that, to me, is an unspeakably beautiful gift indeed.