What do you feel when you see a mentally disabled person? Compassion ? Repulsion? Or even aversion? But why feel this way? Just because they are different? Just because they don’t act or think as the way you think what is logical? These were my feelings when I first arrived at Hyeeun School. These thoughts heaved my steps when I entered the immense glass door of what I thought was to a different world.
Being different doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong. However, this society starts categorizing these different people as mentally disabled ones, and we start to see them just as mentally disabled people, nothing more nothing less. The society insists that these people are less capable than us and they need our help. However what is our understanding of helping? Donation? Volunteer at public service? We often regard helping as an act of supporting someone by offering one's services or by financial or material. However, here is what most people don’t realize, helping involves your heart. If our eyes are only capable to perceive them as the less capable ones, no matter how much time we spend time with them, our minds suppress to ever perceive them as friends. Once our minds repudiate to perceive them as friends, the helping becomes compassion. Do it because you want to do it.What they need is not compassion, but eyes that can see them as friends, ears that are willing to listen to them, and mouths that will be companions to talk with.
No comments:
Post a Comment