Knowing me, knowing you

(A reflective piece on the issue of body image and identity)

I have always thought I had quite a nice bum – just saying – and I used to be generally pleased with my legs too, especially in the years after I took up cycling.  That view didn’t extend to my feet though, which were often swollen and a dodgy colour too because of my poor circulation, but if I was wearing trainers I used to think I looked pretty reasonable in cycling gear. Alright, I was proud of being a MAMIL 🚴

On the downside, in terms of my body, were my puny arms – maybe ‘sinewy’ would be a more flattering expression –  and attempts to throw a ball any distance, for instance, would always end in embarrassing failure. My eyesight was appalling too, which ruled out any chance of becoming a fireman; a fact which still grieves me to this day, although even if I had had 20:20 vision, my weak arms would probably have disqualified me 🙄.

In short, I was built to be a cyclist, albeit a pretty average one.

In the later years of my working life I regularly commuted fifteen miles each way into London by bike, which gave me a certain swagger as I saw myself as a member of a community of people who lived life on the edge (and believe me, if you cycle regularly in London traffic you will know what I mean). My boss reflected once, when I met with him not long after having had a particularly unpleasant encounter with a post planted in the middle of a cycle lane, that maybe as a senior executive I ought not to put myself at such a risk, but he quickly acknowledged that I would probably ignore him if he did make the suggestion.  He was right, because he was talking about my sense of self and he would be suggesting that I shouldn’t be me. (As a matter of interest he recently told me that my cycle commuting was on his personal risk register, and clearly not without cause).

Our perception of our bodies shapes our world view of who we are, of what we can do or should avoid and indeed how we stack up against those around us. It also affects our perceptions of ‘normality’. As my body deteriorates my perception of what is physically expected of people in general is changing too; for instance I now  watch someone walking up a flight of stairs without holding onto a handrail and wonder how such a thing is possible. This was particularly evident when Sally broke her leg earlier this year and I was projecting what she should and should not attempt to do on one leg  through the lens of my own disability.

But the same is true about how people respond to me, particularly as I am more regularly viewed from the perspective of being a wheelchair user.  In general I haven’t suffered too much with the ‘does he take sugar?’ reaction, but I notice that people do make assumptions because the wheelchair dazzles them and they can’t see beyond the disability. Even close friends can fall into that trap with two separate people, on being told we were going to Lords (to see a cricket match), assumed I had said we were going to Lourdes. Both of them know full well that we are not of the Roman Catholic persuasion and therefore would be unlikely to be travelling to partake of the healing waters, but the disability spoke louder than their rational thought. Or maybe they simply couldn’t comprehend that anyone would want to spend a day watching cricket.

Disability has its upsides though. For instance, I am viewed as being harmless and therefore safe to engage with, by women in particular, whilst out and about, because I don’t represent a potential risk. Their partners similarly view me as unlikely to be a threat to their relationship and in general I find I have been able to have open and meaningful conversations with total strangers that are not hedged around with the usual suspicion about motives. (The only other time I have consciously fallen into that ‘safe’ category is when taking out my toddler children on a solo jaunt. Small children are great at endowing you with ‘safe’ status, but only while they are being cute).

There is an expression about seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. I suspect the truth is we all see the world through ‘self-tinted’ glasses and it takes a lot of conscious effort to understand people and situations from the other person’s perspective.

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By the way, if you wanted to sponsor my son and daughter running the London Marathon on behalf of Muscular Dystrophy UK it is not too late to do so. Here is the link to their fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mark-and-emma-run-london2022