Pampering the Disabled

FOR WELL OVER  a decade now i have been giving care to people with disabilities, long enough to have figured out that everyone has disabilities, of one form or another, to one degree or another. One becomes impressed by the sheer variety of human mental and physical disabilities.

But there is one disability which every client with whom i have ever worked shares in common. And it may be that this disability doesn't really exist, that i am merely making it up, that it exists only in my creative imagination.

But its good enough for me, and i call it "the disability of being an american". Over a period of months and years I encounter and work with several different disabled people, mostly children. Like everybody else, they come and go in your life, and a care giver and a client often have an opportunity to get to know each other rather well.

And in every example i can think back on, in every client i have worked with, the greatest, most damaging disability they have, in my humble O, is that they are americans.

Americans, as in, its all about me, and nothing else, and not only is my purpose in life to keep me happy, it is the purpose of the greater world in general. Self centered, self absorbed, i don't give a damn about anybody who aint me arogance. I see it eveywhere i look.

maybe i am just looking too hard. In most cases, i can, or think i can, trace the origins of this attitude by early life parental care. parents discover that their young child has a disability, they feel a sense of guilt and obligation, and they (parent) proceeds to "spoil" kid rotten, by serving as servants rather than parents. I see it happening all the time.

I keep wondering if there is anything inherent in the nature of this or that disability which requires a person to be arrogant, self serving, and selfish, and i keep coming up with the same answer; probably not.

It may be that people with cognitive disability are indeed more inclined to remain in a formative, e.g. self absorbed frame of mind rather than evolving personally to higher levesl of understanding and empathy, but surely this is not written in stone.

We need to learn to treat everyone with the same level of respect, and stop pampering the rich, the famou,s the disabled. It would do us all a world of good.