I grazed my knee… Can I have a lollipop?

I hurt.

So do you.

Everyone is suffering through their own pain, people who are more advanced in their years have bung hips, and trick knees, and so many more ailments than are worth mentioning. Every day one of these people will limp past you, or hobble along while you choose whether to have a Latte or a Long Black. A charming middle aged man with a walking stick will be sitting beside you enjoying a pint of a local beer, he’ll strike up a conversation and you soon realize that he doesn’t have a care in the world, he’s happy with who he is. Disability and all.

Pick your crippling ailment, spin the bottle of handicap and may it land upon the incapability that you will embrace for life.

Consider the Emo. No, please dear reader, don’t get that idea. I try not to subscribe to the labels, this example, or any other. But consider what comes to mind when I first mention the word. STOP. Seize that thought! Now, that preconception you have implies an emotional competence and dynamic for that person. This person is sad for no apparent reason, they dread, they weep, they suffer. Then your preconception immediately affects the way to respond and react to them.

What about the professionally depressed? Consider this, compared to them you are the disadvantaged.

Everybody has their own disadvantage, physical OR mental. Do you have a limp when you walk? Do you take a moment longer to get a colleagues joke? Can you calculate the volume of a 10 sided prism without trying? Nobody can really tell you if your disability is in fact an ability. Popular culture considers the ‘autistic’ man as someone who seems like a freakin re-tard, but who is so good at maths that you’d be stupid NOT to let them loose in a casino. Sure, this is a romantic and optimistic view, but primarily inaccurate.

The attention given to all ‘special’ people is a two edged sword. It is an empowering thing, it can give people the drive to push through the fog and excel where they otherwise would not have had the strength to, but dependencies form, and at what point is pandering to these people making it more comfortable for them to STAY ‘disadvantaged’? It is easier to have something wrong with you than not, having people offer you their seats, or being extra patient, or being excessively kind, or constantly complimenting you, or pushing forward your career.

In no way am I calling depressed people, or people with limps, or learning disabilities, or speech impediments ‘fakers’. But if that crutch enhances your social responses from people, or gives you an excuse when you falter, or makes people go out of their way for you, are you going to work as hard to overcome it?

And despite giving people the benefit of the doubt, for as many good people as there are, there are just as many people out there who would dishonestly take advantage of you without a pang of guilt using their abilities, why not their disabilities?