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Now, people say: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger..." And I see the practicality of this concept inasmuch as it is a common platitude that holds perhaps a modicum of truth. But my friends, WHAT on this planet is STRONGER than a healthy newborn baby??? I mean - this is a being, which is simultaneously at its most vulnerable and its most resilient. A trembling, squirming mass of close-to-boundless, if not boundless, energy; and by virtue of that fact, a vessel of astounding potential. When I say healthy - I mean a baby that doesn't have any truly life-threatening or seriously life-compromising birth defects. A lack of limb is not a deterrent for most babies. What the fuck do they know? (Actually, I think they know a whole lot - but it is not the sort of knowledge we older ones seem to be able to comprehend). These truly curious and intriguing beings come here as they are. And they continue to teach us the same lessons over and over again. Who needs extra-terrestrials when you got babies???

I remember there was a "human interest" story about a woman who had been born with no arms and, as most people formed in this way, she had mastered the ability with her legs and feet to do just about everything which those with arms and hands are able to do. Someone was talking to me about having seen this story on television. At one point, the two-limbed woman had been filmed eating out at a restaurant - effectively buttering her bread with her feet!! YEAH RIGHT FUCKIN ON!! However - this person telling me about it - a very good person in their own right - said something that surprised the shit outta me!! She said words to the effect that the two-limbed woman shouldn't go to a restaurant because the way she looked and moved would weird-out the other patrons. And I was truly shocked! I mean - if I saw someone buttering their bread and eating with their legs/feet - because they had not the limbs traditionally used for such an activity, I would think: Rock ON!! How amazing that is. How BEAUTIFUL that this person hasn't let their untraditional form keep them from living as full a life as they possibly can.

Furthermore - I had a voice student - a young man with a mild form of Tourette Syndrome. He is in college now. He was my student during his high school years. At his first voice lesson, he told me about his TouretteS. Cool with me - I mean - as long as we could work in some constructive way, I had no problem with that. As it turned out, he was and is one of the best voice students I have ever taught. A natural vocal talent but possessing also the ability to grasp high concepts about visualization and musical interpretation. Likewise, he is an affable young man, unself-conscious, and good-humored. As far as I know, everybody likes this guy - and with good reason. We were talking one time about being and thinking differently. He opined that his lack of stage-fright could well be an offshoot of his TouretteS, since the particular manifestation of his condition has to do with a lack of self-consciousness.

All right - I've cited two physiologically-based examples of people being different from the "norm", whereas other kinds of differences are not as cogent or obvious. For instance, those of us who are part of any alternative lifestyle may or may not appear different "in a crowd". And some may assert that we have a choice about our lifestyle, while those born with obvious physical differences have no choice at all. Yet in another time, someone with TouretteS would be thought of as insane or possessed. Most people who have and are treated for TouretteS lead productive lives. Imagine how many lives were considered and made to forfeit at the hands of ignorance. And people with untraditional physical forms - in some cultures are still deemed outcasts or "unsalvageable".

I say that most people who live any kind of alternative - or non-traditional - lifestyle have come to that lifestyle because something about the mores and conventions of "polite society" has rung UNTRUE for too long. That there IS in fact a physiological reaction to this UNTRUTH. We sense that we cannot live fully and at our optimum state of being unless we expose the lies and refuse to be subjugated by them.

Certainly, we could suppress our feelings and reactions, but to what end and at what cost? Illness? Personal distress? Distress in any incarnation is not a "necessary evil" and no one can convince me otherwise. It may be unavoidable in too many cases, but "necessary?" Fuck that! Conceding the necessity of distress is a delusional and destructive state of mind.

I do a lot of driving in my work as an artists' model - going from college to college and art school to art school. I witnesses distress all over the damned road. How we drive is a reflection of our personality - a statement about what we think we do and do not deserve. It strikes me that the more aggressive a person's sense of entitlement is, the less content they truly are. I could be wrong, of course. But if you are sound within yourself, as I say, then you really don't feel very snarly toward others. But I tell you - you get a couple of drivers with that snarly attitude - whether they are haulin or draggin ass - and badaboom-badabing - I’ll be getting very upset, myself. Losing my cool, for sure, which is a terrible way to drive - dangerous and unpleasant. I see how the distress of others bleeds into me - feeds fears and resentments. It's quite remarkable - and I do not like it. But energy is such a powerful thing. And somehow - in too many situations - it seems that negative energy trounces the positive. I suppose because it is so outsized - hyperbolic. Because that person's sense of entitlement is running amok- indiscriminately insinuating itself. It's fucking sloppy is what it is; and utterly artless. And I must continue to work on becoming less influenced by it.

But let's return now to, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." So adversity will make a person stronger, rather than if they had never experienced it at all? Undoubtedly, surviving adversity can help a person codify their resolve to rise above and perhaps combat further adversity. But, is this person truly stronger than they would be, had they not been subjected to tribulation and abuse in the first place?

Am I more fortified because I was bullied and shunned - for being who I was - during my elementary and middle school years? Are the defenses and complexes I've developed as a result (for certainly they exist) actually somehow a positive aspect of my existence? I don't see them as positive. They continually trip me up, quite frankly. They rear their ugly heads at the least expected moment and drag me down. Would I - or any of us - be better off if we had experienced unadulterated acceptance all our lives up to this point? I don't know the answer, and I'm grateful to be able to ask and consider the question.

But I do feel that too many of us are raised on a steady diet of fear, which begets many other destructive behaviors.

This is why all of us living alternatively to the mainstream must do so with our whole selves - uncompromisingly. Not aggressively, not defensively (for both of those behaviors belie an undercurrent of fear and insecurity). We must live Exuberantly - keeping company with those who accept us as we are - as we change and become. Acknowledging that our evolution is revolution. Recognizing that all of us, by virtue of our differences are expressions of the Cosmic Soul - and even as we may stumble, our journey is a manifestation of Poetic Defiance!

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