Blessings behind disability
Of all misfortunes in the world, suffering a disability is thought to be the worst.
“It’s rare to be born a human,” sang the ancient Tamil Poetess Oovaiar. “rarer than that is to be born without hunched back, blindness and hearing loss…”
The first comment a disabled person gets from a fellow human who notices his/her ability is not that he/she could grow above his/her disability and learns a skill, but how cruel God has been in making someone disabled. That can’t be the case. If God is kind, why should he make a set of people suffer and others enjoy everything?
Though this is a philosophical question many use to argue against the existence of god, answering it in the context of disability provides ample proof of God’s presence and the kindness he shows towards everyone.
While disability is a constant challenge a person has to live with, it brings a few advantages too. Foremost of them is the ability to trigger the feeling of compassion, kindness and a sense of caring in fellow humans. That is perhaps why most human beings are unable to even think of harming a disabled person.
In the quest for comfort and sophistication, most forget to appreciate the pleasures sensory organs provide.
Though many spiritual practices teach the “attitude for gratitude” or the importance of “counting our blessings”, how many in reality wake up each morning with a sense of appreciation for sensory organs?
It is disappointing to hear people say that they opened their eyes and first saw a person or an object of enormous misfortune that portended a bad day. If that ought to be the case, what can be said of those who do not have the ability to see the beauty of this world gloriously lit up by the sun? Thinking of them should at least remind most of the blessing of sight. That is not to say that the blind necessarily brood over their condition or lead a woeful existence.
There is beauty in things we can’t see. Like the beauty of the Lord which our inner eye alone can feast on or the reflections of that force in many little things around us which the blind can appreciate better than anyone.
The most important lesson disability teaches them is how to convert the God-given energy into a positive force to progress in life, how not to complain but to understand other’s limitations, how to find opportunities and how to let things go and move forward.
