In a hundred years will anyone remember us?  Will our difficulties, our challenges be issues of the distant past or will people still be fighting the good fight?  What people everywhere want is respect.  I want respect. I want people to see the individual I am and judge me according to the same standards as those without a disability.  But really, in a hundred years will anybody care?  If we are lucky our world will still exist, we won’t have killed ourselves off.  And maybe there won’t be any more disabilities in the world.  Maybe cures will have been found and people healed. I don’t know.  What I do know is that a humble bumblebee doesn’t care if I walk or not.  He doesn’t care that I am banned from some places because I have the temerity to be sitting in a wheelchair.  He cares about his nectar, about rain and the predators that may find him tasty.  My problems, my issues are mine, not his.  Hopefully his kind will continue to fly long after I am dust and a distant memory, because I plan on being remembered.  With luck people will remember that I tried to help.

Someone once said that the future will take care of itself, perhaps.  But we need to lay the foundation that the future can grow from.  Just because in a hundred years no one may care about the issues of today, does not mean that they won’t and that we shouldn’t.  We should.  We need to correct the problems of today so that tomorrow won’t have to.  The problems of today are, in part, because no one came forward yesterday to deal with it.  “Do not put off until tomorrow what should be done today”.  I don’t know who said that, but it is dead on.  Politicians thought that if they ignored the issue of those with disabilities then maybe they would go away.  I am here to say that the issues have not gone away in a hundred years and unless we fix the problems now they are going to be here in another hundred years.  So pay attention, the feisty wee bitch is back.