I can clearly recall the awards ceremony my High School held to honor and encourage the interests of kids who were about the enter “the real world”. I won a few awards that night, but not the one my sights were set on one – the Socratic Seal – awarded to the student who demonstrated the most curiosity about the world around them. My fresh-faced view on the world was one of interest: there was so much to learn and so much to do, and even more beyond what our society kept us busy doing.

Less then two weeks before, I had finished reading A Brief History of Time by famous physicist Stephen Hawking. The book aimed to introduce a person of average intellect to the wonders of a universe that is so far beyond our sight. Hawking had a wonderful knack for explaining and describing phenomena like black holes and the relationship between space and time. As one review of the book explained, “This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can’t help but marvel at Hawking’s ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions”.

One of the most memorable features about Hawking was, in my mind, his wheelchair. Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and is almost entirely paralyzed. Being a kid with no exposure to people with disabilities, I was stuck in a train of thought that I believe most people share – that people with disabilities are ‘unfortunate’ because we never see anything more than the ‘disability’ side of the ‘disabled’.

Very quickly it became evident to me was that I was so interested in Hawking not only because I found his writing fascinating, but because he opened my mind to his abilities. He grew up with a passion and followed it for years, disciplining himself to become one of the top physicists in the world. At the same time, he maintained his ability to speak to the common person about the most abstract and complicated matters in science. He did it not only battling the misperceptions he faced on a daily basis, but with a disability that limited his ability to carry out his own experiments or even doodle on a whiteboard.

Eventually I would come to believe that all people share a commonality that cannot be ignored. In our own mind lies the curiosity about the people and world around us that cannot and should not be shrugged aside. It is the true meaning of the word ‘potential’ and is the most important thing that people often forget when assessing others. More so, that potential puts the ‘human’ in ‘humanity’ and provides us all with a drive and lust for life that should never be overlooked or denied because of a wheelchair or medical condition.

Once you look at the world with eyes big enough to swallow the universe, it suddenly makes things like wheelchair ramps become silly non-issues. There seem to be costs for some accommodations that society cannot swallow, but if we can study the universe from a million light-years away, surely we can find other ways to address those problems. I now ask myself how we can move our society to think and work together to bring these solutions to fruition.

My first experience with true advocacy happened at CDR. Prior to that experience, my first and honest impression of groups like CDR and ADAPT were that they were strong-arm groups that forced others into submission to further the cause of people with disabilities. That was until I attended a protest at the Rochester Genesee Regional Transit Authority (RGRTA) headquarters because of RGRTA was placing exceedingly high rates on people with disabilities while RGRTA had a huge budget surplus. I left the protest disgusted by RGRTA and wondering why RGRTA could design and run an entire busing system but seemed unable to move some monies around to provide bus rides to the disabled for less then $8 each way when I pay $1.25 for the same service.

Afterwards, my opinion evolved. Advocacy for people with disabilities is not about protesting (despite the protests) nor is it about demands (despite the demands). Instead, I believe that advocacy for and by people with disabilities is a unique and special force because it shows the willpower and humanity of people that want to be treated fairly and equally to those who seem to have lost the ability to see the potential for willpower and humanity in people with disabilities.

Regrettably (at least in my eyes), my contributions to this movement will likely only be seen in the back-end of things. My strengths lie not in protesting and demanding things, but in appointing myself an ambassador to people outside the movement. My view of the movement says that if people like Stephen Hawking can empower a kid to learn about the world he lives in and enable science to push the progress of mankind for the better of all people, then we deserve to give Hawking, and anyone else sharing the same journey through life, the opportunity and accommodations to follow their curiosities as far as they want to take them. And I believe that anyone can and should steward those ideals, regardless of for whom they are intended, and that that they should carry them in whatever way they are capable and comfortable.