The medical world defines disability
as a physical or mental condition that limits someone's movements,
senses, or activity.
As hard as this may be to believe, a human is not
complete with just a working body and brain. In other words, the definition of
disability is true…if we were all computer programmed robots. What about our
emotional health? Mental and Emotional health are not the same (I even googled
it); mental health includes cognitive thinking and deductive reasoning.
Emotional health, on the other hand, includes the acceptance or control of one’s
own emotions. One could be an Olympic gold medalist and have an IQ of 160,
perhaps the Guinness world record holder of the fastest vegetable dicer while
simultaneously reciting all the digits of pi known to mankind, but if he is not
emotionally invested in his desire to live instead of to just exist, that
technically makes him disabled too.
We are all hypocrites. People throw around phrases
like “be yourself”, “you are special”, or “be unique” without truly believing
in it themselves. If you can think to look past someone’s taste in music,
fashion sense, mode of expression, or religion, then looking past a disability
is no different. Nancy Mairs suggests “that we insert disability daily
into our field of vision” (Mairs “Disability”), but I believe there’s more to acceptance that exposure, as not all disabilities are observable. Perhaps introspection at our own emotional setbacks can lead us to become empathetic and understanding of disabilities, whether they be physical, mental, or emotional.
