In middle school, my younger brother gifted me the book Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. In this book, I discovered this famous quote: “Everyone is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” In this novel, the main character, Ally, hides the fact that she cannot read by creating disruptive distractions, causing teachers to think she is a troublemaker. However, her new sixth-grader teacher, Mr. Daniels, can look past and see her for the clever person she truly is. This book, specifically this quote, resonated with me. Having a brother with Duchenne makes it difficult to see bigoted people excluding those within the disabled community. Society tends to unreasonably judge everyone by the same rigid …show more content…
Everyone is extraordinary. We have different approaches to life, and it is senseless and damaging to make others feel insignificant by shaming their differences instead of embracing them. I love this quote because it stands as a reminder that nobody is perfect at everything, and that we should never compare people to a narrow set of standards that everyone will eventually fall short of. We all have a way of thinking and perceiving the world. Everyone can accomplish great things in life, but they will never reach their full potential if their success is constantly minimized. While I do not have a disability, my brother does, and I will never understand what he has gone through. I will never have others underestimate or infantilize me, because they think that having a disability hinders people from being successful. Nevertheless, I am in a unique situation that allows me to see how the world cannot completely comprehend what it is like for those with disabilities. I straddle between never fully understanding and seeing more than what most non-disabled individuals can