Let me tell you something…I was not expecting this to be my first blog of 2023, but sadly, life just isn’t like that. I woke up this morning to the news of what happened in Cincinnati involving Buffalo Bills CB Damar Hamlin and how he suffered cardiac arrest right on the field.
Personally, I am in shock and disbelief of what transpired, and it is a constant reminder of how precious life can be. Given the nature of the situation, there’s a chance he may never play football again because of what happened. As a Roman Catholic, the only thing I can do now is pray for him to survive and live another day.
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However, I can relate to the fact of what the entire sports world is feeling as they wake up this morning. What I do as a self-advocate and public speaker is similar to the NFL in terms of being out there for the community and sharing what I can do. But there are some neurodiverse individuals who were probably wanting to watch the rest of the game and were wondering why the game wasn’t starting again.
They were probably upset that when the game was postponed, they were asking why this is happening?
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The truth of the matter is that sometimes something like a football game just doesn’t seem to be all that important. In the autism/neurodiversity community, we are no different than any organization like the National Football League. We are people trying to make a living just as much as trying to make a difference.
We don’t participate in contact sports like football, but some of us in the community live on borrowed time and not knowing when our time will come. These can range from illnesses to sudden events to life changing situations. One day, you could be alive and ready to take on the world and the next minute, you could be cashing in your chips either expectedly or unexpectedly.
In 2019, I attended AANE’s annual conference and Becca Hector talked about borrowed time in the autism/neurodiversity community in her keynote address. She would later talk about this same story at an Autism Tree Project Lunch and Learn later on in 2021.
The important factor is that we all need to live our lives to the fullest each and every day. We may never know when our time will come so each and every day, we need to sometimes treat every day like it is our last.
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Case in point? Last spring when we lost David Sharif to an epileptic seizure. Our community was shattered to our core and it’s still taking a long time to recover from his sudden death. Sometimes the only thing we can think of is that a human life is more important than anything worth meaningless. Sure, he and I had plans for the Global Autism Project and Autism Knows No Borders community, but when he died, those plans and any possible future plans died with him.
But did it matter that our plans were dead? No, it didn’t because the only thing we could think of was being there for his family. I can imagine that the Buffalo Bills and for that matter, the entire NFL will be coming together in the coming days to support his recovery.
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The truth is though that what happened to Damar Hamlin could happen to anybody and should serve as a reminder of why we need to be constantly treating each day like it could possibly be our last. For now, though, I ask God to try and give Damar a second chance at life because he still has much to give.
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Catch you all later!!
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