School trips are no ordinary experience for 12-year-old Mayan Hanan, who has a rare disease that makes him struggle with severe pain during long walks. His class arranged a special wheelchair capable of navigating through the varied terrains. Mayan shared: “On this trip I felt that I’m like everyone else and that I’m equal among equals. Everyone really made a big effort for me.”
Such is an example that what helps a child with a disability is to support them, participate with them, and identify with them.
To identify with them means to understand their suffering, to accept them as equal and to wish for us to live and participate in everything together. And participation means sharing everything that we have 50-50.
How can we share the disability of another person? We can take half of their disability by adding our strength to theirs. And the disabled person supports the able-bodied person by providing an opportunity to help and feel that they contribute.
What exactly does a disabled person give us? This is the crux of the matter. It seems to us that the able-bodied person gives to a disabled person only because we fail to understand how much the disabled person gives. Participation gives us an opportunity to connect and to act together.
What is the correct attitude toward people with disabilities? For the able-bodied, it is a call from the general forces of nature that we need to take these supposedly disabled persons into our society, take care of them, and bring them to a state where they feel no disability at all. It depends only on our correct attitude toward such people: that there is no disability and that we are equal in everything in life.
How are we equal? We are equal in that we share all good and bad things among us equally. When we succeed in reach these feelings, even if only a little bit, then we will feel ourselves in a different state. We will be in a different world, one that is equal and worthwhile to live in.
Based on the video “Disability Equality from a Kabbalist’s Perspective” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Oren Levi. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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