They say that there is ability in disability, yes sure there is, you can’t spell disability without the word ability, but even ability alone isn’t perfect, it comes with its flaws, it comes with its shortcomings, it comes with its fears. Even able bodied people still fear the future, they fear going into something new, they fear going for job interviews, they fear their first day at school, they even fear approaching the opposite sex. It seems this question always find its way into our lives at different points in time, the question of am I good enough? The truth is, if able bodied men have doubts, you would expect special people to have same. Special or not special, everybody has doubts.
This makes people with disabilities have fears and such fears can lead to questions like, Will I be accepted as a person, not as a person with a handicap? Will people look down on me because of my disability? Can I really handle the job responsibilities? Will I get that job? Will I be able to marry my dream spouse?
The question goes on and on from time to time, but the truth is, it is all in the mind, it is a trick the mind plays on you.
This is why people with disabilities need a mentor, they need to be told this, it is all in the mind, little wonder the great scientist Albert Einstein said “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking”
Everyone needs to know this but people with disabilities need to know it better, they are disabled not demented, nobody these days pay for strength they pay for knowledge. Steve Wonder is who he is because he thinks, the late Ludwig Van Beethoven was also the same. So special people need to be mentored to know that the brain is the single most important part of anyone’s life and as long as they have it they’re good to go in life, like an hungry lion it will take a lot to tame them, they should be taught to believe in their abilities, in their strengths, in their future and in their aspirations and ambitions. Like the bipolar disordered Leif Gregersen said in his 2011 book Through The Withering Storm
“The measure of a man, or woman, is not so much what they have accomplished, though that has weight. It often is much more though what that man or woman has overcome to accomplish what they have.” And like Theodore Roosevelt said “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”