2008.05.06
The recent chatter about whether a person born disabled is being punished for bad karma in their last life pisses me off. Not for the reason you might suspect (that I’m angry infants are being, in effect, blamed for their disabilities), but because I don’t think of my disability as a bad thing. [For the record, I became disabled at 7 months old with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis that has not gone away and has left me unable to work.] I’ll state it again, clearer: I’ve found that my disability has had more of a positive than a negative effect on my life.
There’s this fear among people who don’t have disabilities that being disabled is the worst thing in the world, because a lot of time people fear losing control that they, in reality, don’t have. People fear losing independence that, again, they don’t really have. Look closely at your lives and you’ll see that you don’t have the total control you think you do. You aren’t as independent as you think you are.
Being disabled isn’t the worst thing in the world. I have time to write, which I certainly wouldn’t if my health were perfect and I was working the job I thought I wanted, which required an hour commute both ways. I was able to spend every day with Sugar (my beloved Siamese cat) as she was dying, which I couldn’t have done if I was working. I have a great deal more compassion and empathy for people in pain than I would otherwise. I’ve never had to deal with fair weather friends because the general weather has always been cloudy and my friends accept that.
Being disabled is just another opportunity for learning, and it is a great, incredible one that far outweighs the pain I have or the physical limitations I have.
http://community.livejournal.com/buddhists/2378776.html is the entry that sparked this. And here is my comment in reply:
“As someone who was disabled at 7 months old, I have to say that no, I don’t feel this is an “infliction” because of bad karma from my past lives. In fact, my disability has been, more than anything, an enormous blessing. I can’t even imagine how my life would have been different without it, but I know that I would be a WORSE person without my disability.
Maybe I should be asking what all you normal people did wrong in your past lives to not end up with such a blessing?”
The Funnel
Source : community.livejournal.com/buddhists
