(DISABILITY)

What is the greatest possible disability of a human being?, this question put me in a deep thought process when I was visiting one of our training centres which deals with students who are with some sort of disability(??)

I asked this question to many of my associates and friends and there were different responses, some responses were not connecting and some gave a different perspective. I kept thinking about this question again and again, as the responses, thoughts and the deliberations from all good friends continued, there was some clarity that emerged and gave me an access to a profound answer for the question I was thinking about.

The possible answer is ‘The greatest possible disability of a human being is not to consider others as capable’. This is a kind of ‘being’ and often we are blind to this being which leads to disconnection with others.

Let me share one of my experiences, some months ago during one of my visits to a training centre, I was asking the students to introduce themselves, some of them were wheel chair users, some has hearing impairment etc. (thanks to our corporate communication friends for helping me in improving my language when I refer to these students).

I clearly see some impatient and obstinate nature in some of the students when I gestured, ‘no worries, you can introduce yourself while sitting only’ when they tried to stand and introduce. My feeling was to ‘help’ them that way as I felt they are ‘disabled’ and ‘they can’t’, but I was puzzled by their impatience although they couldn’t completely express it.

This continued with me in few of my centre visits until I’ve got some insight during one of my conversations with an associate, he helped me to understand that phenomena. Generally when you challenge (in whatever way it is possible) someone’s weakness or disability, they would become impatient as they consider the treatment as ‘highlighting my weakness or disability’ which no one would like to face, especially the people who suffer with some sort of disability. OMG! I was never present to that and was completely blind.

What I felt about them was a sheer ‘helpfulness’ but they considered it as a great ‘humiliation’. Till that time, I was not present to the fact that how it would feel when ‘someone deliberately helps when they don’t need it’.

My perspective of ‘helping’ came from a being of considering others as ‘disable’ or ‘deprived’, which was unworthy in nature.

I realised, this was my ‘disability’.

When we consider ourselves as capable against others that puts us in a superior state and leads to a thought that others are incapable, sometimes we are blind to this state and would cause the disconnection with the world.

I repeat, ‘the greatest possible disability of a human being is not to consider others as capable’

Insights:

* How did you feel in one of your last conversations with someone, where the other person was trying to help knowing about one of your weaknesses?

·      *  How would you deal with a person when you realise that the person has some weakness / disability?