Why assume that heaven means you can run and skip?

Or, more exactly, that heavenly bliss requires it.

Remarkable words in the NY Times from Peter Singer, who wrote recently about knowing Harriet McBryde Johnson. An excerpt about meeting Harriet and having dinner with her:

After she spoke, I arranged for her to have dinner with a group of undergraduates who met regularly to discuss ethical questions. I sat on her right, and she occasionally asked me to move things to where she could reach them. At one point her right elbow slipped out from under her, and as she was not able to move it back, she asked me to grasp her wrist and pull it forward. I did so, and she could then again reach her food with her fork. I thought nothing of the incident, but when she told some of her friends in the disability movement about it, they were appalled that she had called on me to help her. I’m pleased that she had no difficulty with it. It suggests that she saw me not simply as “the enemy” but as a person with whom it was possible to have some forms of human interaction.

...

And Singer writes about their ongoing email correspondence and ponders a few questions further on:

Her life was evidently a good one.....I know that surveys have found that people living with disabilities show a level of satisfaction with their lives that is not very different from that of people who are not disabled. Have people with long-term disabilities adjusted their expectations downward, so that they are satisfied with less? Or do even severe disabilities really make no difference to our happiness, once we get used to them?
via nytimes.com

h/t to Meredith (thanks!)