Hastings: Transition
Disability Rights
Transition
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Canterbury Girls Secondary College International Women's Day Dinner |
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Good evening students, good evening women of earlier generations, good evening teachers and other guests:
When I was discussing this event with Jenni Huon we talked about whether the theme should be "transition" or "transitions". At the time I thought it did not matter much, but as soon as I started to write this address I realised that I am going to talk about "transition". "Transitions" (plural) suggests one discrete thing after another, a beginning, middle and end before another beginning. It is a word describing things, separate events, bits of life that can be captured, have edges put round them. It implies that "transitions" can be described as finished experiences - "I went through this transition, then I went through that one".
This is true of course - as we look back on our lives certain experiences, events, occasions can be seen as finished, over, done. However, the older I get the more I think nothing that is "over" is really finished: there is always an echo of the experience inside us, a reverberation or resonance which may be activated by later events, or which influences our response to the ups and downs of living. Much of my professional life as a psychologist has been spent working with people who are finding that the echo, the resonance, the memory, is sometimes louder or more compelling than what is happening right now. That loud, insistent echo can affect what we do, alter our decisions, make us timid or aggressive, fearful or ashamed. Of course, such echoes, such resonances from our past can also enable us to be confident, generous, courageous, proud and loving, but people don't tend to seek therapy for being like that!!.
For some of you, those who have been engaged in today's life skills activities, the experiences you have had today will continue to resonate in you, like the hum that goes on after a big bell stops ringing. Others of you, young and old, will remember moments in your life that you know are still humming in the back-ground. Some people will not recognise what the hum is, but will know it is having an effect on them.
I am certainly aware of experiences that hummed in me for a very long time. Being a teenager with a disability was one: it was a very lonely time for me as I could not join in the ordinary activities of my peers and, to be frank, I looked peculiar with my wheelchair, my calipers, my back-brace that stuck up out of the collar of my shirt. This was not good socialising or girlfriend material, I can tell you!! The fact that on the inside I was, as Kaz Cooke puts it, "real gorgeous" didn't even convince me in those days, let alone potential boyfriends. It took me a very long time to recover from that, and I am still sometimes taken by surprise when I realise that someone actually enjoys spending time with me, especially if I feel the same way.
Another experience that has left a negative hum was that of simply trying to live an ordinary life in a world that was built for somebody else. If I went out with my family I could not use the train or bus or tram; I probably could not get into the shop, or cinema, or holiday resort; I would not be able to go to the loo, or wander off by myself in a park, or meet my friends to hang about together, unless somebody (usually my mother) came with me. Wandering off by yourself is not easy when your mum is pushing the wheelchair! My family and I, and most people who had disabilities in those days, expected very little from the world in terms of equality, and we were grateful for the little we got. It was an exciting moment when the airport was built at Tullamarine because it had an accessible toilet. Someone once came up to me in Melbourne and said "did you know you can go to the toilet at Tullamarine?". Oh goody, I thought to myself, that will be really useful if I'm shopping in the city; but I smiled and tried to look pleased.
Now I am in the business of administering a law that says for people who have disabilities there must be equal access to just about everything, I can't afford to let that old echo of gratitude and low expectation get in the way. That is something I have had to be aware of and be careful of over the last three years as I have negotiated with business and government and politicians.
So - even when we have made a transition from one goal, or stage of life, or relationship, or job, or city, or country, to another, the place we have been, the interactions we have had, will continue to live in us and influence the way we are in the next place, with the next person, working toward the next goal. There were transitions, and there is transition: a process, a continuing part of living, a way of describing being. Instead of naming something that was it names something that is.
So this evening I am going to talk to you about "transition" as part of the business of life.
I looked up "transition" in my trusty electronic thesaurus, and it offered the following synonyms, or words with the same sort of meaning: alteration, change, conversion, variation, modulation, passage, progression, shift. None of these words means exactly the same as another, but put together they give some flavour of the initiating word, transition. I am going to follow up three of those words even further and see where they take us: change, modulation and passage.
Let us first look at "change": that's a real buzz word these days - in fact I have got to the point where I think if anybody else tries to tell me how great change is, I'll tell them to buzz off!! When I look up "change" in my thesaurus, I get a very different feel from the words that pop up for transition. Change gives me: alter, correct, modify, invert, reverse and substitute as verbs; variation, remodelling, reorganisation, restyling, innovation as nouns. To me most of these words suggest the surface of things, and they suggest attempts to improve things. They also suggest criticism or discontent: something is not good enough so we remodel our nose, restyle our hair, reorganise our desk, substitute one house for another, one job for another, one relationship for another; we keep trying something new.
If you look at the world today, this is what you will see all the time: change, innovation, swapping and switching around in the search for the final, satisfying outcome. Hem lines go up and down, hair is curly then straight, lips are glossy then matte, sun-dried tomatoes and goat's cheese give way to risotto and shaved Parmesan. It's all very stimulating and interesting, and we can look back on some of those phases later and still enjoy the excitement, or wonder how we were ever convinced they were a good thing. No doubt we'll look back on what we're doing right now and chuckle over it in a few years - especially if we take photos!
All this is one aspect of transition: the continually shifting, realigning kaleidoscope of fashion in dress, food, entertainment. There is even fashion in spiritual practice and belief; fashion in child bearing and rearing; fashion in teaching methods. It is a significant aspect, particularly in your teenage and early adult years when being in the fashion is so important, when you are making your own more lasting transition from childhood to womanhood. You are trying different styles of self-presentation both to the world around you and, more importantly, to your own inner eye: you're making different statements about who you are. Eventually you will settle on some of these and you'll realise that you've created a bit more of your permanent self - you've moved through a transition and you are ready for the next. Actually, you're probably already half way through the next one because transition is made up of lots of little changes all happening at once, not one thing after another (or seriatim, as I have learned to say in my new legal world).
Change is an essential part of transition; you cannot have transition without change, whether it is gradual or all at once. In the world today we do need to understand our relationship to change, and we must learn to work out when change is required and when stability may have something going for it. Not all things a good just because they're new - nor just because they're old, for that matter. We have to learn to think about matters for ourselves.
I know I have some anxiety about change, particularly if I am not in control. I think this stems from those resonant experiences in my life I mentioned before. When things change I get afraid of being left behind, of there being no arrangements made for me to be able to go on being independent. Perhaps my organisation is moving to a new building: will they remember I need to be able to use the building too? Perhaps friends are changing jobs: will I still be able to go shopping with them to the market? Car companies are changing the design of the new models: will I still be able to get my wheelchair hoist on the roof?
In fact, things have generally worked out ok, although not always without struggle, so I don't let my anxiety dictate what I do; but I do have some worrying times, and I think some of my habit of worrying comes from the past when people did not take my real needs into account when they made changes.
When you have a significant disability it can take a very small change to make a difference - recently I got this new wheelchair, with slightly thicker hand-rims for better grip, and suddenly I can't get into the toilets in the church hall any more. That extra 4 mm or so made the difference. No wonder I get alarmed when changes are in the air!
As you go on in your lives you will be wise to learn to adapt to change, and to create change. At the same time it would be good to wonder about change, to check that the gain hoped for is worth it, to assure yourself that the change is healthy and productive, not simply avoidance of something else, or change for the sake of the excitement only. The American Indians claim to reflect on the decisions of the previous seven generations, and the effect on the following seven generations before they change anything significant: we can learn from that - but we must also be aware that our situation may be unique, and seven generations on either side may never need to think about it.
In my case, seven generations ago there were no wheelchairs like this to put wider hand-rims on, and in seven generations time there may be a completely different way of getting around - controlled floating, perhaps. In any case, as you go through life it would be good if you controlled change rather than letting change, and those who want change, to control you.
Let us look at another synonym for transition generated by my thesaurus: modulation. This throws up a different set of words: adjust, tune, accommodate, temper, strengthen, toughen, intensify. These take us a long way from change, fashion, correct and reorganise. Adjustment, tuning, accommodation are all words about relating, about being aware of oneself in relation to another, or being aware of bits of oneself in relation to other bits. We have relationships with ourselves as well as with other people, and the self relationship is a very important one indeed: in fact there is a whole school of psychotherapy, called self psychology, built on this understanding. One thing we have to achieve in this life is a good, healthy relationship with ourselves. Sadly, this may be one of the most difficult things we attempt, but once it is accomplished, we can have healthy, life bringing relationships with other people. Unfortunately, we often tend to try to do this the other way around: we think that if we can find a good relationship with somebody else, we will feel better with ourselves. Truly, this does not work.
Think about it: there are two people in a relationship - mother and daughter, friend and friend, woman and man. If one of these has a rotten relationship with herself, does not like or respect or appreciate herself, who is the other one supposed to relate to? If you think you are a pain in the pinafore, how can you really believe somebody else thinks you're the bee's knees? This causes anguish in all sorts of relationships, because the one who does not like herself will not believe the other can like her, and spends so much energy trying to get the other to prove you love me" that both become exhausted and may even begin to dislike each other. Then the mistrustful one says "see! I told you so!" and goes on to mess up another relationship, with the negative back ground hum getting louder all the time.
When I finally gained enough physical independence to go to university and live in a shared flat with other students, I was faced with this problem close up. Because of the sorts of thing I have already spoken of, I had always experienced myself as not good enough. I was sure that anybody who sat and talked with me at a party, or came over to visit, or asked me out, was only doing so because they felt they had to. Why on earth anybody would feel they had to talk to me when there were twelve thousand other students to choose from and their mothers weren't there to make them be polite I never bothered to wonder about: I was just overwhelmed by my negative hum, and thought the universe worked that way. Looking back, I can see it was dopey, but living through it was extremely painful.
I coped by being very apologetic, and by making negative remarks about myself. It's a sneaky mechanism: if I apologised people would reassure me, and if I made remarks about myself first, I would not be hurt by other people making them - and they'd reassure me. Well, you can guess what the effect of all that was - I persuaded myself I had no real place in the world, and I never believed the reassurances.
One day a friend and I were going to the theatre, and it was raining. As he got my wheelchair out of his car I apologised for the effort, for the rain, for the time it was taking, for breathing - and he said "Elizabeth, if you apologise once more I'll never go out with you again". My hardly-listened-to inner self must have taken over at that point and told me he meant it and to shut up - and he did, and I did, and that was the first time I modulated myself, accommodated, adjusted and stopped the tyranny of that wretched hum. He and I are still friends, and over the years I learned to develop a relationship with myself that was more kind, more accepting, more appreciative. I slowly stopped making rude remarks about myself, stopped apologising, began instead to realise that if I wanted people to like me, it was just possible that they wanted me to like them; if I enjoyed spending time with somebody, it was just possible that they weren't pretending but that they actually enjoyed spending the time with me. Revelation!! Revolution!! But a revelation and revolution that had to be repeated over and over again till the new music in my heart was louder than the negative hum I had carried inside me nearly all my life.
There are still times when the old hum is much louder that the new music. In my job I have to go to meetings with the Attorney-General, or other government ministers and their advisors, I have to chair committee meetings, participate in the deliberations of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of which I am a member, make decisions about budgets, about complaints under the Disability Discrimination Act, about staff, about policy. I get up on stages and give speeches, and last year, after I came to speak to you, I represented the Commission at an international meeting in Manila. On all of these occasions I can hear that old noise grinding away in my head, getting between me and what I am trying to achieve. Being in a public and responsible position can be very lonely; other people do not realise that I am not confident, that I feel uncertain, that my heart is pounding, that the old "not good enough" waltz is playing away in my head. As I put it to one of my staff after my first meeting in Canberra with a Minister: "I feel like I've just done a VCE exam".
At these times I have to remember what is my purpose, and remind myself of the work I have done to create a good relationship with myself. If I can be a companion to myself under stress, then I can keep going in an open and creative way. It's probably true that everybody else in the room wants a good outcome too. If we can relate to each other, accommodate ourselves to each other so we can communicate, there will be a good outcome for all concerned. This means that I put my energy into creating good relationship, not into protecting my own delicate ego.
Tyrants have very delicate egos, and they sacrifice their relationships in a constant demand to have that ego boosted. They demand respect no matter what they do, but they know underneath that the "respect" people pay them is really fear, probably seasoned with dislike or contempt. Tyrants do not believe in the so-called respect offered because they know they have not earned respect. Sometimes they decide to prefer it that people are afraid of them, and they can pretend that is a sign of power, but I think they are often still very empty people because they know that they have not earned the respect, or love, they long for, and they can't give it to themselves either.
I know that one of the things you have been considering today is self-esteem and self-respect. I think self-esteem, a sense of your own value as a human being, comes largely from the inside. It is built on early experiences of being loved and safe and wanted. Self-respect is to do more with a realistic assessment of ourselves, and the surest way to self-respect is actually to do something we can respect ourselves for. This something may not be successful, but if we have done the best we can, and if it was an honourable goal, then I think self-respect is properly earned.
In my work at the moment I and my staff are working towards the development of Standards under the Disability Discrimination Act. I won't go into detail, but I hope eventually to have developed nationally accepted codes of practice in public transport, access to buildings, employment and education, codes which are accepted by Parliament as law. These are big goals which are provided for in the Act. I think they are honourable goals, and I shall put my best effort into them. If in the end any of them are not successful, I shall certainly be disappointed, but I shall be able to respect myself and my staff for the work, the vision, the commitment that went into it. Disappointment at an outcome can exist at the same time as self-respect.
This is part of what I mean by modulation, accommodation, tuning: we have to learn to hold several feeling and thoughts at once, and to weave them into a coherent part of ourselves and our self-expression. You can be disappointed in an exam result, pleased with the improvement you have made in the subject, proud of your hard work and determination, worried about the effect on university placement, and optimistic about the future - all at once! To emphasise just one bit is to lose balance; to play just one note is to lose the richness of the whole symphony.
Transition always has within it this requirement for adjustment, attuning oneself, tempering.
Tempering is an interesting word: knives and swords are tempered by being heated in a furnace then cooled several times. This makes the steel very flexible and strong. Being tempered by life is quite different from having a temper at life! Being tempered means becoming a strong and flexible person through life's experiences. Some of these will be wonderful, some will be horrid: all will temper us as we learn to be ourselves, to stay whole, to make the transition from one thing to another without falling apart with anxiety or anger or impatience.
When I was twenty, young and untempered, I would look at my parents and lecturers and think: "If I am as complacent and apathetic and un-fervent as they are when I'm their age, I'll end it all". Now I am their age and more, I realise that I am just as passionate and enthusiastic and eager as I was then, but I don't go off like fireworks so much, I have greater patience (as no doubt those old fogies did with me, had I but known), and I most certainly do not want to end it all!! Life, I guess, is tempering the temper out of me.
I know a lot of you students have brought with you tonight a woman of an older generation that you admire, a mother or grandmother or aunt perhaps. Some of you will admire your teachers. It would be good if you could work out what you admire about that person, and see if she can tell you how she developed that quality. It may be that she, too, has been tempered by experience.
So far I have talked about transition as change, and as modulation or tempering of oneself.
The last meaning for transition I want to look at tonight is "passage". I expect you have all been told that whatever you are doing, expressing, wanting at the moment is just a "phase" and you'll grow out of it. I don't think it is very helpful to tell someone this - though it can be very helpful to let people know that you have been through something like they are going through, that even painful or lonely times pass. Mind you, I never really believed that till I was 40. Then I began to realise that I had been through something like this before - perhaps several times - and yes, indeed, it does pass. So that's one of the advantages of getting older: you begin to recognise the landscape of the journey, and you can find your way about a bit more easily.
Being told you are "going through a phase" may be irritating, but it does indicate at least that you are moving, going somewhere, not simply stuck. It does let you know that transition is occurring, even if that's not what it feels like at the moment.
A passage is a way, a route, a path, with an entrance and an ending. At any time we can only know the entrance and the bit of the path in front of us - we cannot know the whole route, and we cannot know where is the end, even though we think we know where we want to go! Sometimes we seem to stand about in the entrance, not making any moves for a long time. Sometimes we feel we are spending a lot of time on preparation for "the real thing" without actually getting to the real thing (studying sometimes feels like that!). Sometimes we feel we have been rushed along the passage faster than we can cope with. Sometimes the passage seems to be very long and dark and difficult. Sometimes it is bright and beautiful and entrancing. And sometimes we may be travelling in several passages at once, all a part of a larger road in our lives.
Passages are ways from somewhere to somewhere else and, in my mind, the passage is every bit as real as the destination. Occasionally we may find ourselves swept up out of one passage, which was on the whole quite comfortable and predictable, and plonked breathlessly down in an entirely new one. This can happen for many reasons: perhaps your parents move to a new city, or there is illness in the family which changes everything; perhaps a favourite teacher leaves and you have to get on with someone new; perhaps you receive a surprise invitation and have to decide whether to take it up or stay put.
This is what happened to me: I was quietly going about my normal day as a counsellor at La Trobe University when out of the blue there was an urgent phone call from the federal Attorney-General's office: would I agree to being considered for appointment as federal Disability Discrimination Commissioner? This was such a surprise I asked for 24 hours to think about it - and it's no small matter to decide to change your whole life for five years, leave your clients and colleagues, close your (very) small business, and launch into the entirely unknown. However, I decided to give it a go because I did think there was something I could contribute. So - some passages we step into, others come to get us!
All, however, are passages - in the end all are passages to the person we become, and to the world we create. I think that is a crucial item which is often forgotten: our growing up, our making these transitions, our change, modulation and passage, are not just "ours", they are not just for ourselves to develop and enjoy. Ultimately all the change, modulation and passage we undertake adds up to the world we create for ourselves and millions of others to live in. Certainly we feel the hardships and glories, the disappointments and the fun, in ourselves; but at the same time we are ever and always creative beings, we are making our world.
As you students look along the possible routes and journeys of your own lives, teach yourselves to be conscious of the thousands of other lives that will interconnect with yours. Some will touch you, or you them, only fleetingly, for a moment, and others will be entwined with your lives for ever. Either way, and in between, each is an opportunity for creation, for life, for the expression of love. Some of my best relationships have been only 15 seconds long! Moments of warmth and humour can be created so easily, and bring life. Moments of chilliness and bad temper can be created just as easily, and bring anti-life. Is there really a choice? Well, yes, there is: when we are busy and preoccupied there is always the possibility of ignoring or bullying those who are around us, and we should always be aware of the choice. We are all, one way or another, ultimately in the same passage, all moving along the road of human history. That road will be much more pleasant, and the destination rather better, if we take responsibility for our own behaviour and contribution, and try always to create beauty and joy even if only for a moment.
Well, here we are near the end of page seven. As you students get on with your year - for some the last year at school, for others still part way along the school journey - I hope you will learn to appreciate who you are and to approach transition, and separate transitions, with gusto, verve and spirit! May your changes be interesting, varied and exciting; may your modulations result in good connection with others and with yourselves, and may your passage in this life be bright and courageous and loving.