Eli Clare and SOAR

SOAR duet posted by rb.richx

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpfRa2OgrEo

 There was an intense beauty from reading both "Exile and Pride" and watching the Soar duet.  While Eli provides direct insight into his thoughts, the audience can only be left to draw conclusions from Kiera Brinkley. But it is what we can see in this video that reminds me what I can't capture from the first read of Eli's story. After watching Kiera Brinkley, a quadruple amputee, perform, I was able to actually see the passion in what she does. When I reread certain parts of Eli's story again, there was an amplification in his description of the countless losing races and failed attempts to climb the mountain. One very strong statement in "Exile and Pride" states," The dominate story about disability should be about ableism, not the inspirational supercrip crap, the believe - it - or - not disability story". I believe this to be true. Sometimes as spectators we become caught up in identifying others as different and are constantly seeking for what extravagant feat they may achieve next if at all but what we fail to acknowledge is the beauty in them being just as able as any other fully functioning person. What Eli is doing is not just going out there to win a race and losing, he’s going out there and trying. Same goes for Kiera Brinkley, she is not competing for a spot on “Dancing with the Stars”, she’s showing the world how equally capable she is of dancing like any other. What they both have in common is that they are not doing the most extraordinary things in the world, they are both giving their all. Eli’s story so far does an excellent job at knocking down walls of common misconceptions. It gives me the opportunity to step back and analyze how I perceive others and actually keep in consideration how they may or may not want to be perceived. His story and this video altogether made me reconsider last week’s theme on empathy. Eli desires for others to be empathetic, bring differences together to a type of unity but it begins with first people understanding how to separate pity from sympathy and sympathy from empathy. With that thought I am well aware that I honestly cannot be empathetic with the idea of having a disability but I can relate to the idea of having your home taken away, or being judged for your sexuality, or just the thought of feeling restricted because of societies views. But it begins with people acquiring a better understanding of empathy, sympathy, and pity so we can fully move forward by removing restrictions that we allow ourselves to feel and place on others.