You know what I find interesting? Just about every crip person that I know who, due to medical limitations, hasn’t been able to find a way to financially support themselves in this economy, has a deep-seated desire to “work” to “earn” a self-supporting income. To “prove” that they aren’t “a drain on society.” Even the ones who can’t work get it mixed up in their heads that their self-worth is only worth the money that they “make.”
The few crips I know who don’t buy into that have, like me, been unable to ever in their lives financially support themselves through legal work. We few are the only ones in the crip community that I know who don’t tie in our personal self-worth into dollar signs. Having never “made” money, some of us realized we aren’t made of money.
Okay, so the few crips I know who don’t believe their self-worth is tied to the money they aren’t “making,” well, what they do tie their self-worth into is the “work” that they do. And here is where many misunderstand me. I feel like I have to get “work” done every day or the day is wasted. But I never mean “work” as in labor that provides income. My self-value, like that of this minority of crips, is tied into how much I feel I am doing “good” or giving assistance to others. When I say I work my ass off, that I’m working, that my line of work is blah blah blah such and such, my “work” is synonymous with my passions. And it’s the same for this other minority of crips.
