Life is Not a Spectator Sport

My aunt recently observed that I speak very naturally about engaging in my various hobbies and activities, such as: cooking, playing with my nephews, and helping with household projects.  She asked me, "how do you interact with people in these activities to allow yourself to be so totally immersed in the activity and make them your own?"  She made note of the fact that by necessity elderly people become more observers than active participants and wanted to know how one stays actively involved in an activity from a more observant position.  Her question is an excellent one, and I believe that the answer to it is part of why I have been able to navigate having a spinal cord injury without suffering from major depression, as is very common.  The simple answer lies in how I approach activities and frame my mindset when I am going to participate in something that typically requires movement.

It is the difference between sitting and watching, and choosing to become a part of the activity.

When people suffer from a disease, injury, or even the ravages of time and age, which limit or even divest them of the ability to move, they have the choice of resigning themselves to living life on the sidelines, or finding a new way to engage.  I simply refused to be relegated to the sidelines.  I knew that if I wanted to continue to feel like I was participating in life I had to actively choose that I would continue to be engaged, even if I was not physically moving.  There are so many ways to participate in something, which do not require one to do the actual heavy lifting.  For example, in crafting, cooking, and housework projects, I simply become the director.  It is a great opportunity to boss people around, under the guise of being helpful and participating!  Joking aside, I am able to equally participate in these activities by paying attention to what is going on, rather than just casually observing and chatting about something incidental.  In doing this, I am better able to offer opinions and suggestions about other ways that the activity may be completed.  In some ways, my sedentary state becomes an asset.  While those that I am working with on a project may be distracted by the other things going on around them, or even the activity itself, I am sitting back and taking everything in.  This gives me a different perspective, and sometimes that viewpoint allows me to see a different solution.

Even though technically I am observing and directing, there is a way to do this with active engagement, rather than passive observation.  It is the difference between sitting and watching, and choosing to become a part of the activity.  I choose to take in whatever I observe, and eventually engage with whatever I am seeing.  By actively thinking about what I am taking in, I become a part of that action, rather than someone that is merely sitting and watching it sans participation.

Showcasing the baked goods that I clearly made without any help!

Another way that I am able to make activities my own is in how I talk about them.  By using words which make me a part of the activity, rather than an observer, I am indirectly participating in the activity, and thereby claiming ownership over it.  For example, when I am doing something with someone, I use the words "we should" instead of "you should."  I have found that by making myself a part of activities in this manner I retain some autonomy over what is happening with my physical body and in my life, whilst simultaneously showing the people that are helping me that I am actively engaging in what they are doing for me.  I feel like this is a way of showing that I appreciate that they are doing things for me that I cannot do for myself. Rather than lying about like the Queen of Sheba and allowing them to cater to my every need, by phrasing my requests in a manner which imparts my participation, I am choosing to share the burden of the task, however the situation allows.

At the end of the day, the hard facts of reality are what they are.  I do not move, I cannot move, and there are many things, that despite adaptive and assistive technology, I cannot do without someone else's assistance. This leaves me with two options: I can choose to let myself become an inanimate lump, that watches life pass me by, or I can choose to be a part of the world around me in creative ways.  It comes down to how I choose to perceive my role in an activity, and actively choosing to be a valued participant.