Pity People

For my last post I’d like to talk about how people with disabilities receive pity from healthy “normal” people. It belittles them and implies that because they now have limited function or mobility that they shouldn’t be expected to accomplish anything. Just recently I was with a few friends and noticed while passing the school for the deaf on main, how a few of my friends were sorry and felt deep remorse for these people who would never hear anything in their lives.  Even though they have every right to feel sorry for them, for those who struggle with disabilities or simply just being different. The people surrounding them will always feel worse than the one who is actually living their life and trying to make the best of it.  Think about how hard the life of a person who lives in a poor and starving country will be, how difficult the challenges will be. How that life will not be so easy, struggling everyday. I believe that life is hard for everyone, not just for the people who are deaf or people who live in strife but everyone. Everyone has his or her own challenges. It’s these challenges that make life worth living, making each person their own. People adapt and become stronger for it and we shouldn’t feel sorry for ourselves or others, especially in those types of situations. But we can’t blame those who pity differences. They see themselves as “normal” within their culture’s mainstream. However when they see others who are different from them, they project themselves onto that different person and fail to see the perspective of the person they are projecting themselves on. All they can see is how sad a life it would be if they could not see, walk, talk and especially if they had to suffer discrimination. They only see pain and not the life that is living regardless of these limits placed upon them.  This pity may be coming from a place serenity and kindness however it becomes more of an accusation. It only confirms the limit that was places on this person that they are damaged and not good enough, it becomes a judgment and somewhat of an insult although the intentions were not.  There is no easy way to fix this however something that we can do is become proud, of others and ourselves. Focusing on our strengths instead of our weakness. Eventually we would have a society in which both race and disability don’t influence the way people are treated and viewed. After all we are all human, however it’s these differences that make us who we are individually. This area in which we have our differences has to be walked on carefully as to bring people together instead of dividing them.