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The word ‘disability’ covers a multitude of conditions, but those who live with a handicap all have one thing in common – lack of confidence. It doesn’t really matter whether one was born with a defect, like Mat, or had one visited upon them. Mat had to put up with some particularly nasty bullying at his all-boys boarding school and in choosing acting, he hasn’t exactly made it easy for himself. He himself admits his attempts at activities that defy the usual requirements for the job could be described as classic 'over achievement'.
To a less tutored view, it seems those with disabilities deal with them in one of three ways: attempt to ignore it completely, try and make the most of it or turn their faces to the wall. The first and third options are fraught with risk and heartache while the middle way – the rocky but navigable one that most take – is filled with constant reminders that despite what the hospital therapists say, there are some physical activities that just can’t be done to the same level. Mat was straying dangerously north of the comfort zone in pushing the boundaries.
Life means little without challenges – and it may be the biggest one is to be able to wipe your own arse – but as Clint Eastwood put it, ‘a man’s got to know his limitations’. There’s no harm in striving for a goal but make sure it’s a practical proposition first. If someone is making it easier for you, you will just end up feeling worse than you did before.
The other way to maintain optimum confidence is to be damn good at something on which a particular disability has no effect – although for most this nirvana remains elusive.
Even picking scuba-diving, with its liberating weightlessness for the paralysed, there is always the awareness of not being able to swim against any kind of current and efforts to do so will quickly use up air. And before getting to the floaty and euphoric stage, buddies have had to fetch and carry the gear as well as their own, and will have to tailor their own dive to these limitations. The answer is to drift dive, with the current, and fall in from boats because that element of ‘lift and shift’ is reduced to a minimum. Maximum reward for minimum effort. Result. But forget the disability? Apart from being a big mistake in this particular case, I don’t believe you can ever do that.
But you can take compromise too far. If it is only possible to ascend Ben Nevis by being lifted there, in your wheelchair, by burly fund-raising firefighters – then what's the point of doing it? Get someone to video the view from the top.