I know it’s politically incorrect to feel sorry for those facing a handicap or serious illness. But I do.
The boss I had at my last job was an insanely handsome man. He was also kind, funny and smart. He had been in a wheelchair since he was about 22 years old. He and his friends in California had a habit of going to the roof of the friends’ 1-story house and jumping into the pool from the roof. This guy slipped and landed on the concrete.
You never saw a glimmer of self-pity in this guy, even though his condition led to bouts of serious complications without warning. He would say, “That accident saved my life. I was a wild kid, and I would probably be dead if the injury hadn’t slowed me down and forced me to re-examine my priorities.”
Now if a paraplegic seeing his injury as a gift from God doesn’t pull at your heartstrings, just wait for the rest of the story.
He later got married (his wife I only knew from pictures, she looks like a model). They decided to use in-vitro fertilization to have the child they desperately wanted. The son (a complete cutie) was born with cerebral palsy, and you guessed it… will require a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Now this to me seems beyond a cruel turn of events. But my boss would say it was a blessing. “What other parents could understand the needs and emotions of a child in a wheelchair but us? Besides, our house is already set up for it.”
What is the difference between someone like my boss, and someone else who decides to end it all or just gives up after a debilitating injury? Is my boss a better person? I suppose that would be the quick answer to jump to. I certainly thought he was an amazing person. And it’s hard to attach the label of “amazing” to someone going through a rough time and who doesn’t handle it as gracefully and as cheerfully.
Bottom line: Why do we feel badly for people with handicaps and serious illnesses? Why do the people themselves divide into two camps: one camp goes on, and another whithers and is never the same?
I suppose we could feel bad for so many reasons, most of which involves not wanting to see other humans in physical or emotional pain.
But I think the real reason we feel bad is the same reason why some people get so upset when a child dies and could barely blink when an adult dies. Because the results are the same (illness, injury, disability, child death): We feel so bad because we sense a permanent loss of POTENTIAL.
With my boss, he still had so much potential and he’s lived up to it. He became a family man, a career man, a good person. But the day his accident happened I think even he can’t deny, the door to a whole bunch of possibilities was slammed shut. As much as handicapped people can achieve, a guy in a wheelchair could never again dream of being a firefighter, for example.
My uncle has advanced COPD. His whole life he lived to travel, and even wrote a few travel books. But now his health has made it impossible (he should have stopped traveling 2 years ago, if we’d all be honest about the danger of it). He’s staying positive, despite my aunt’s sudden death in Egypt last April after being on a cruise. But despite everything he’s done in his life, I still feel sorry for him because he’s lost the POTENTIAL to be able to do what is most dear to his heart.
Maybe that’s why some people who suddenly find themselves going blind or deaf, or becoming a double amputee in a war, or becoming a paraplegic after a car accident… maybe the ones who can’t handle it well aren’t “weak” or have a “bad attitude”. Maybe they just no longer can see their potential. Family and friends would love for those people to “buck up” because it would make them (the family and friends) feel more comfortable. But when potential possibilities are perceived to be completely stripped from you, how can hope live on?
It goes beyond handicaps and serious illness. What about the person who becomes addicted to drugs and cannot see any possibility of ever getting off the drugs? What about the person who has lived their lives without love, and suddenly realize the possibility of love may never exist for them? What about the person living in poverty who has no education, no job skills, and no possibility of ever improving their situation?
People who become sad about their circumstances may not just be “negative nellies” who need to just cheer up. People who commit suicide may not be the selfish people that many would like to dismiss them as. Maybe these people just get lost in a fog, and lose sight of any hint of potential being available to them in the future. They can’t see any possibility of anything better, whether their vision is accurate or not. It’s still what they can and cannot see - it’s still their vision and we shouldn’t judge it.
Living a life without being able to see any potential for things ever changing for the better must be a very lonely, weary road.
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You’ve made some very insightful points. I’ve often wondered why there are so many people born into money, privilege and beauty who are unhappy. Sure, most folks who are poor and infirm are pretty miserable, but then you’ll see someone who, in spite of all of their seemingly insurmountable obstacles, faces it all with total joy and grace.
I’ve faced a few big problems in my life, but I never once considered giving up. I guess I’m just a born fighter. I’m also convinced that things will always get better if you tough it out. I believe that to my core. How often have you seen someone give up when it seemed so clear to everyone else that they were just about to turn the corner? I like your fog metaphor. I think it’s very accurate. Depression can do that to people, I guess.
Wow. I was just having a conversation with my husband about this exact thing. We know someone (my mother’s best friend since elementary school) who contracted MS in her early 20s right after her husband left her unexpectedly. She had a small child to raise on her own and wound up in a wheel chair just a couple of years later. Her earliest diagnosis was that this was all psychological!!! The ex didn’t do anything to help raise the child and things just got worse for the friend. Flash forward almost 40 years later, she’s got more wrong with her and more to deal with than anyone I’ve ever met. We were talking this weekend about how she NEVER complains. She truly believes that she chose this path and that she’s here on this planet in this condition to experience this. Is it just a coping mechanism? I have no idea. I have to tell you that I don’t think, if I were in her situation that I’d have anywhere near the grace that she has. I guess some people are just way more evolved than I am.
Christine mentioned “grace” and that’s what it is. Everybody has a choice. The choice is to feel sorry for yourself and give up or you can deal with the cards handed to you and learn to adapt to the circumstances. It’s a lot of inner strength. Your boss says that the wheelchair is a blessing because he probably would be dead without it. That’s called seeing the positive in a situation and there’s probably some truth to what he says. Which is worse…being in a wheelchair and learning to live in a new way or being dead? That is a person who chooses life, he does not choose to whither away in his chair thinking about all the things he can’t do anymore because he could be dead and then really can’t do anything anymore.
Everyone has the potential to turn their situation around or make the best of the situation. It’s all in the mind. Living isn’t just about what physically happens to us.
Those people I don’t feel sorry for, not because it’s politically incorrect…(since when is it incorrect to have compassion for another human being, give me a break), but because even though physically they may not be able to do what I can, mentally, emotionally, they are light years beyond where I am now. Those are the types of people I look up to.
I learned this years ago when I was an MP and was helping out with the Special Olympics. Kids all over the place with all sorts of disabilities…but you never saw a happier kid. There wasn’t any whining or tantrums being thrown about not getting this toy, getting an ice cream right now or not winning first place and the shiny blue ribbon…they didn’t give a crap about any of that…they were just as happy as could be participating in the race and seeing all sorts of people, even myself, cheering them on. They had a blast. That day I realized that those kids knew the meaning of life….I did not. I didn’t feel sorry for them by the end of the day…I figured out that, as Christine said, they were way more evolved than I was.
Thanks everyone for such thoughtful comments, even the comments who disagree with me.
I agree that our attitude really can dictate how we handle things. For example, YoYoBoy has felt sorry for himself since I’ve known him. Has he had bad luck like the rest of us? Yes. Is his job shitty sometimes? Yes, but he earns a decent living. But he DECIDES his life is sucky so he takes no joy from his kids (although he’s a good dad, it’s never enough to cheer him up) and he throws away people who love him (not just me) with both hands so he can reach out for something better. He’ll never be happy.
I’m not talking about “sad sacks” like him, who just decide that nothing short of spectacular is good enough.
I’m talking about average people who may not have the positive (almost miraculous) attitude seen by others in their situation, BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES OTHERS DO. Some people don’t have supportive families or children who love them. Therefore they don’t have as many possibilities to look forward to through tough times.
I just don’t think we can judge people who are facing horrible odds and have no support and no love to carry them through. We can’t look at my boss, who is handsome and smart and is surrounded by family and friends who love him, and expect his reaction to his injury to be the same as some 19 year old from a horrible abusive home life who became crippled in Iraq and is returning to a life where no one is there to help him or care about him.
True, some of us are dealt the crappiest cards in the deck. Babies are being born in places ravaged by war and famine at this very second. Hope is a concept that they will probably never even come close to experiencing.
At my daughter’s high school graduation last month, I saw a woman I went to high school with. She was a cute, bubbly cheerleader in high school. When she graduated, she married a nice Mormon boy and started having kids–six, I think. Over the years, I’ve seen her at little league games, school assemblies, etc. She seemed to have the perfect white picket fence life. I was shocked to see her in a wheelchair at the graduation. It appeared her body was ravaged by some type of neurological condition. MS? Her husband was lovingly holding her hand and she was surrounded by all of her kids. She looked as proud and full of joy as the rest of the parents in the audience.
You’re right. I couldn’t imagine going through that kind of thing alone. Of course, you have to give love to get it. I’m always joking around that my final days will likely be spent alone in a Scotty trailer out in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I’ll be barefoot, toothless…and probably drunk.