Tuesday August 25, 2020
Todd Hanson
Persevere
Glancing around the ALS waiting room at Mass General, I was surrounded by people struggling to walk and to speak, the future and the world I knew was about to change. That was nearly a dozen years ago now.
As a kid mom brought me to the library often, I was astonished at how many books she read. One day I stumbled on John Howard Griffin’s book Black Like Me. That was a huge departure from my normal reads about war heroes or star quarterbacks but this book stuck with me all these years. I grew up a white Midwestern kid, living in white Midwestern neighborhoods and attending white Midwestern schools. I had no exposure to bigotry, hatred and injustice. Heck I had no exposure to anyone who didn’t look like me. I continued to grow up in a segregated society enjoying the advantages it afforded me.
Maybe that book planted a seed of the need to gain empathy. Maybe it was my dad dying of cancer while I was in college, life experiences and losses change us. He fought in the big war, taught me to fish and how to enjoy being terrible at golf. He was my hero and best friend. When I became an architect, I wanted my work to be meaningful. Maybe I could create settings that ease the anxiety of cancer patients or anyone else exposed to suffering. I tried to gain empathy, just like John Howard Griffin had done traveling the Jim Crow Deep South with dark skin. I tried to sleep in noisy intensive care units, spent nights in locked psych wards, sat bedside in substance abuse centers while someone suffered the throngs of withdrawals and met one on one with the parents of children who suffered severe brain injuries.
By pretending to be a cancer patient, someone committed to a psych unit or by listening to stories, I thought I knew what they felt. But sitting in that waiting room at Mass General, I realized I was about to learn what I could never learn by pretending or listening to others. Now I was terrified. I had two teenagers to put through college and felt the world crashing down. I had looked forward to someday hiking the Appalachian Trail, run ultra marathons, traveling the world with my wife. I didn’t see it at first, then faith caught hold. I was so thankful it wasn’t my wife or kids who got this. I remembered my dad, who was a man of immense faith, never showed fear or anger while battling cancer at my age. I wasn’t nearly as strong as he was but I realized I have so many things to be thankful for. This was my chance to understand the inequities and challenges people with disabilities face and hopefully do something with it. Maybe losing the ability to walk or talk is a chance to listen, understand and share my new gained perspectives and empathy. Hopefully in some small way open eyes and make this corner of the world a bit more inclusive. Gifts aren’t always what we expect them to be, sometimes we have to dig deep to find the prize.