Sailing for All

This past summer, I had the opportunity to sail for eight days from Aalborg, Denmark up to Kristiansand, Norway aboard the Tenacious, a 65 meter-long tall sailing ship. The ship was owned and operated by a British charity called the Jubilee Sailing Trust, which subsidizes voyages aboard their ships for physically disabled people. The Tenacious was equipped with wheelchair lifts that allowed people in wheelchairs to move about all three levels of the ship, as well as plenty of hand and foot rails for the blind.

Four days into our voyage to Kristiansand, we stopped at a small Norwegian port town called Risør (in the picture) to spend the night. The day we arrived in Risør, I went on a hike up to a swimming hole with the other kids my age sailing on the Tenacious. With us from the ship came Lilly, a sixteen year-old girl who had been in a wheelchair since birth.  She was a sweet girl who didn’t talk much, but she was easier than any of the other disabled people aboard the ship for me and the other kids to connect with since she was our age.

       
                                                                                                                                                       It was a bit of a hike to get to the swimming hole, and when the path became too steep and rocky for Lilly’s wheel chair, it was disheartening to think that Lilly would have to wait back at the ship while the rest of us went swimming. However, this did not happen. Instead, one boy from the ship decided that he could carry Lilly, the only physically disabled person on our hike, up the hill so that she could go swimming with the rest of us. Once we reached the top, we all went for a swim, including Lilly, who, much to our amazement, was able to breast stroke magnificently in the water. After drying off and carrying Lilly back down the hill, I got to push Lilly in her chair through the town and back to our ship, and something strange and unexpected happened during this trip back to the ship. While I was pushing Lilly through town, I saw countless people look at her apologetically or with looks of pity. They would look up at me, and I would meet their gaze and they would furtively look away again. This happened with almost everyone we passed, and it enraged me to see Lilly become some sort of spectacle to the passersby. I was embarrassed for Lilly, as I realized that she must go through this whenever she is in a public place; indeed, I never gave much thought to the ability that “normal”, able bodied people have to remain comfortably anonymous in public.

A couple days before we arrived in Risør, Lilly’s older sister Tyga and a sixteen year old boy aboard the ship named Ollie asked Lilly if she would like to go for a walk around the ship. I had no idea what they could possibly mean by this, as Lilly was clearly in a wheelchair because she was unable to walk. Upon hearing Ollie’s question, I quickly dismissed it for a joke, as there was certainly no way that Lilly would possibly be able to walk, let alone stand up straight. Tyga and Ollie picked Lilly up out of her wheelchair and supported her under her arms (kind of like the way two football players will help an injured teammate off the field), and Lilly actually put one foot in front of the other and tentatively yet exuberantly made a full lap around the main deck of the ship. Everyone on the deck watched with amazement and reverence, but there was silence—no one knew what to say. However, I think I have something to say now.

Though I am still puzzled about the existence of God or a higher power, I do think that people like Lilly have been divinely placed on earth for us to meet, interact with, learn from, respect, and love. While pushing Lilly around in Risør, I saw a spark inside of her every time she smiled or laughed or told a joke and her face lit up. Lilly’s amazing contribution to the world is allowing people to look at themselves more carefully after spending meaningful time with her. I think that Lilly’s walk around the deck of the ship was so stunning because it was an absolute confirmation of Lilly’s spirit, her personhood, her life.

 In spending time with Lilly, I came to appreciate the nature of my blessings and the incredible fortune I’ve had in my life. I have come to see that through some accident of birth, I have been given an amazing head start in life. Because I can run, jump, throw a baseball, kick a soccer ball, shoot a basketball, hit a tennis ball, swim, or climb the masts of the Tenacious, it felt really good to be able to cooperate with the other boys to carry Lilly up the hill that day in Risør —I felt like I was doing something purposeful and using my own physical gifts to help Lilly, who was not treated to the gift of being able to walk or run or climb.

I’ve been extremely blessed, and while I acknowledged this before the sailing trip, I think that it took this trip to make me realize in full the nature and extent of my blessings. My sailing trip was an inspiring experience because seemingly expansive boundaries between able-bodied and disabled people were broken during this voyage aboard Tenacious.

 Being in a wheelchair can definitely have a dehumanizing effect on the people in the chair. But for me, the brief time I spent with Lilly confirmed for me that Lilly was a person, too. Her smile is infectious, and seeing her happy has such a tremendous effect on everyone around her. With these characteristics, Lilly was able to elegantly, humbly, and gracefully rise above the dehumanization and disappointment of being in a wheelchair. I think Lilly was in my life to open my eyes and allow me to appreciate the many beautiful things she, or anyone in her position, has to offer the world. On the ship, she was surrounded by love, and that love was fully reciprocated back to us. Because of this relationship, it is people like Lilly who really allow and enable us to love. This experience that took place in the incredibly intimate environment of a ship allowed me to grow spiritually, and made me realize that really incredible things, like a girl in a wheelchair walking, are in fact possible.