Abilities, Disabilities, & Everything Else …

Sometimes abilities become a trial to you, when disabilities can lead to greater understanding. All things are nuanced, and beyond complete understanding, always …

A rusty fence post, an interesting metaphor for ‘breaking down’, or a creative writing prompt?

Humans like to give labels to things. We see a flying creature and name it ‘bird’, or a tall brown and green plant and call it a tree. And more than that, we will want to further label bird or tree, and name which particular type of bird, or tree, we are looking at.

Animals don’t do that, as far as I know, to an animal, a bird may be a mate, something to eat, a predator, or nothing of interest at all, and can be safely ignored. Animals don’t feel the need to understand these things in their lives any further than how these things may impact on their basic needs of safety, food, procreation, and not much else.

Some animal lovers make say that’s not true, and their dog understands every word they say, and that may be true, but personally, I doubt it goes much beyond the dog wanting to make sure it gets the food and security it needs to survive, in a more nuance way perhaps, than a wild creature, but basic needs, nonetheless.

That is not what I’m wanting to write about though, not now. What I want to write about is the way that people with a disability may be able to get on better in life, by developing skills and abilities to the extent they are expeceptionally good at something, better even perhaps by a person who may be labelled ‘normal’, as in ‘not disabled’.

The way blind people use their sense of touch to read words, written in braille, incredible! When I’ve tried to use braille, as a younger person, a school student, I could barely discern anything at all, really, but blind people sure could! And while people who are blind can’t see, they may well have developed far greater listening skills than most people, to enhance their lives, their safety, their understanding of what was happening at any moment.

I have been hard of hearing for all of my life, I think. I’ve had my hearing tested several times through my life, and been told the hearing in my right ear was poor. I didn’t ‘do anything’ about it, to hear better. I just dealt with the knowledge as…