Shouts From Down Under

It's a dog's life. Stoked heater. KFC bones. Spicy bits...

I'm feeling as stoked as the heater tonight. Yes it's cold outside, here in Tasmania. Not as bad as it can get of course.



The reason for the impressed and happy energy; I've a couple of new beta readers in the pipeline. This. Is. A. Scary time for me. Someone reading my novel/ novels and giving another dose of honest feedback. I mean, what do you do if and when you find out that others may not get the message; that vision you saw, feelings you felt, conversations you heard, and life lessons you tried to shoehorn into the chapters.

What if they don't "get" you?

Well, this last couple of days, I've been on work placement in a brand new career direction - that of looking after people with various disabilities.

It's a common thing. What if they don't "get" you. But mostly, it's what if you don't "get" them.

I feel strongly, already, even as a novice carer of the sensory impaired, that it's us that are the slow ones. It's us that have the difficulties. It's us that aren't using the relatively optimised set of senses, inputs and outputs that we have.

Recently, it was related to me how smart some of these people are, and that most, if not all, are far smarter than given credit. Not that anyone can really be blamed. After all, how would we know if we weren't shown? How would we know stuff if we weren't told? How would we make sure it was true / truth that we were told, if we couldn't communicate back to them, ask them, talk to them, relate to them, enjoy them. Love them.

Well, a lot of people have probably heard of Carly Fleishmann. And I've mentioned her once or twice in this series of web logs.

But why not give her another plug? I think Carly will be remembered like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Delai Lama, and many others. She'll be spoken of 100 years from now, like Helen Keller. A true pioneer.

Don't think so? Never heard of Carly? Don't want to be edumacated to realise there is a set of people trapped in unresponsive bodies, with a bunch of fully functioning pretty much 100 percent tuned people surrounding them, who don't see that person inside. To a lot of people, myself included up until recently, these people with disabilities were unfathomable, and better to be put out of our minds into a corner of our thinking where we didn't have to ponder how they might really feel.

It might not matter that much to you. They are in a "home", right? And perhaps they are a bit sort of scary if you happen across them on their outings in the community.

I don't mean to say that people necessarily have anything against these groups. But there is an ignorance of the true picture.

And seriously, it's not easy to grasp, even when faced with complete evidence, right before our eyes. Well, we'd better believe it. Because any one of us is only a head trauma injury, or a car accident away from being like this ourselves.
Perhaps it's not ourselves. Maybe it's even worse; someone we love. One of our closest friends or relatives.

Well folks, there are millions of people already facing this scenario every day. And they can't shove the whole situation into a dark closet somewhere and hope these folks will just go away, or be medicated into cooperation.

This is not about pity for someone. This is about getting with the cutting edge of this era.

Us. We are the ones lagging behind. So...

I present to you... Carly Fleishmann



And here is a first person sample of what it's like for Carly, and perhaps thousands of others like her.



Carly on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/carlysvoice

Carly on Twitter

https://twitter.com/CarlysVoice

Carly's website

http://www.carlysvoice.com/

Do you "get" it a little more now?

Sometimes we realise we haven't valued what we've got, and it comes as a shock, a sobering slap in our face to know. To know that we hadn't "got" it.



Sparky