The therapist, if he or she is any good, knows that “ought” is the worst possible word during analysis–no one who possesses a modicum of ethos knows what another ought to do with the seemingly inchoate and unsolvable cross-roads of consciousness.
Disability enters another line of calculations on the registry. Factor in another row of numbers and the problem of “ought” becomes a darker problem. I’ve grown to think of this as the swan of the underworld, to paraphrase from old Finnish mythology. The Finns believed that beauty persisted underneath our world, where it glided like a swan over the lake of the dead.
How “ought” a person with a disability (admittedly the signifier of tristesse) plan a life? How ought a professional councilor advise? The problem of “ought and disability” is a rich one to say the least. Its a pregnant problem…
I can’t even tell you how to properly mow your lawn or get a job my friend. I can scarcely accomplish these things myself.
What little expertise I possess resides in the business of writing books. I know just enough about that to keep my nose above the water of cultural inattention.
Yet the thing I care most about is the fight to find jobs for people with disabilities.
The word “ought” strangles me like a Russian verb. It hangs in my low throat. It sticks like peasant bread.
What ought to happen is that he or she who holds a task in hand, who releases birds, or protects them; who raises children; who teaches them; who strives to make the ways forward easier or less encumbered for others–much as Eleanor Roosevelt thought “all” should do–that he or she should be applauded and that many creative ways forward should be possible.
The way to bliss should be easier than it currently is, not just for people with disabilities (who surely deserve a hand in this direction) but for all Americans who wish to take even a small leadership position in the arts of healing our planet and our communities.
I imagine that “ought” is a troublesome word. Art is easier.
Until the United States understands that its a creative nation and a diverse country and that its world leadership will indeed come from this remarkable cultural richness I fear that we will remain caught in the lingo of the dying Victorians, which is of course the lingo of the Republican party.
I ought not tell you what you should be. But Lordy you should have the room to become somebody unique.
Where’s the money to be made in uniqueness? That’s our entire history.
So let’s have a new Works Progress Administration. Let’s bring together the artists, the architects, the people with disabilities, the folks who are thinking hard about the provisional nature of our current state and make a new start, a visionary start for a promising century.
I’m not aware of what “ought” ought to do. But I know wheelchair dancers and deaf-blind poets who would love to talk with people in the corporate sector.
Now is the time for our richness of diversity and able-ness to mean something great.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
This is such a beautiful post.
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