Disabling Ability

I haven't updated for a long time because I've been ridiculously busy with school, work, my other work, and grad school stuff. My new part-time job as a residential case manager at a group home for older adults with developmental disabilities is keeping my life nice and hectic, just the way I like it. This is my first experience with direct care and it's quite unique. There's nothing like helping a 70 year old woman with low cognitive function shower at 9 in the morning on a Saturday. Once you get past the "uhhh, wierd!!!" factor, it's one of the simplest and most rewarding things you could do. Have you ever helped someone do something as simple as brushing their teeth or washing their face? cutting their food for them so they don't choke or holding your hands under their head during a seizure so they don't injure themselves? That's what I do now, and life would've been much more fulfilling if I'd discovered this job earlier.

Not only does working with this population make you really appreciate the opportunities you're given and your ability to simply take care of yourself and make decisions, it makes you see quite plainly that every person is an individual and every individual has rights. It also makes you realize that our ability to do things for ourselves often ends up stunting our ability to help others. When we have the ability to do whatever we want in life, we end up doing just that- what we want- and it's not usually altruistic. Not that there really is such a thing as altruism anyway- we feel good when we help others, and that motivates us to help more. Still, mildly selfish service is better than no service at all, and when we have the time and money to take vacations or buy expensive clothes we do that instead of giving it up to help someone else. Why do we take the ability and opportunity we've been blessed with and use it for selfish reasons? Yes, maybe our hard work paid off and we feel we owe it to ourselves, but it wasn't our hard work that gave us, in the first place, the capacity to learn, work, and get an education. God gave us the mind, our parents gave us the upbringing and probably the money for education, and our teachers help us get the information. What if we have none of those things? What if we weren't given a mind capable of learning or a body that moves the way it should? what if our parents had no money for our education or we lived in a community with an impoverished, poorly run school that will ultimately deny us any chance of going to college? Do these people, who didn't have the capacity for higher education, independence, or work in the first place deserve a less fulfilling and happy life than others? Of course not! So why do we so often behave as though our achievements are entitled to us and we are deserving of the rewards, while others less fortunate are to destined to suffer? Why don't we share the wealth and help those who never got the chances we did? Wouldn't the world be a beautiful place of we did?