My epilepsy--my brain damage--may not be willed away. Others may not wish it so, and be so fulfilled. I may not will it away--whatever amount of strength and stubbornness I will, I may not be so fulfilled.
"Focus on the positive and ignore negative behavior," Mom's words reverberate in my memory yet today.
Ignorance was never an answer. Ignorance was never the answer for me. Ignoring the ignorance of other people will not lead to a positive result. It never could be. Adding two negatives to render a positive result may work in arithmetic. Never was I a star math student--not by a long shot. But, my life is not an equation--it never was. It never will be. I will never will it to be so.
Other factors were at work. Other factors are at work.
Ignorance--ignorance of others--is not a manifestation of malice. It can't be. I am not a servant of malice. I cannot, I will not be. The only hope of advancing understanding is to be willing to learn--to be committed to look inward...to the knowledge of other people, to the language they speak.
Malice is not an evil in which I may invest myself. The return on investment--for me, for God, for others--serves no one. Evil is not a commodity in which I may invest my resources--my being.
Ignorance--my ignorance of other's experiences, and motives--is an indulgence I can ill afford. To the contrary, ignorance, doubt, questions, and anxiety are--must be--invitations to which I engage my being. I cannot presume that I have the answers--the answers universal to everyone with seizures, cerebral palsy, or osteoarthritis, for that matter. Too many variables are involved in the equation to arrive at one simple answer of facts.
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