This obit ran in the NYT today:

John Belluso, a young playwright who translated his own experiences
with physical disability into a prolific body of promising work, died
on Friday at a hotel in Manhattan. He was 36 and lived in Los Angeles.

     They don’t know why he died exactly but he had "Engleman-Camurdrie syndrome, a rare bone disorder that taxes the muscles, had used a wheelchair  since he was 13."  He wrote about disability in his plays and was beginning to make a mark in theater.  But what moved me most by the brief description of his life was this:

In a 2005 interview with The San Francisco Observer, Mr. Belluso said
he found disability "endlessly fascinating" because of its
universality. "Everyone, if they live long enough, will become
disabled," Mr. Belluso said. "It is the one minority class which anyone
can become a member of at anytime."

    Whatever discomfort and inconvenience he faced, he was able to get enough distance from his own immediate circumstances to see disability as "endlessly fascinating."  What an extraordinary mind!  I understand precisely what he means: disability provides a new perspective on just about every aspect of human and social experience.  So much of what we do presumes a certain ability, and when you remove that presumption two things can happen: people either creatively adapt to disability, their own or that of others; or they fail to adapt thus revealing all sorts of shortcomings and failings in the process.  Many abled people are disabled when it comes to dealing with disability.

     And he obviously had a dark sense of humor as well: a minority that anyone can join at any time!

    There is a Taoist sensibility here.  Disability is universal, not in the sense that we are all now disabled, but, rather, that we are all more dependent on one another than we ever really realize.  And we will, almost certainly, become disabled as we age, just as we have all been disabled we were were young.  In a way, then, there is nothing especially bad or good about disability.  It is, it just is.  Didn’t Chuang Tzu say something like that?