Disability is not Inability

Sometimes you are shocked out of your comfort zone by something you always took for granted. Something so usual as to be almost unusual!!

You marvel at how able men and women are able to produce all kinds of exhilarating performances, hurl a javelin, a discus or a shot put so far seemingly without effort or concort their bodies and extremities to produce world record breaking dives, gymnastic floor exercises, balance beam performances, asymetrical bars and ring tumble displays of raw talent. Run so long and so fast almost at the limit of human endurance and still manage an interview and a smile when your whole body is fighting to recover and gulping air greedily in response to that super human effort to cross the finishing line a hair's breadth before your opponent. You also wonder at those chaps who seemingly without thinking are able to time and again aim and hit the bulls eye in the archery contest or shatter the clay pigeons in the air pistol and air rifle competitions.

This is the human being at his peak performance, the world beater, the Olympic and world champion forever remembered for the remarkable feats of accomplishments and national heroes in their own countries.

But what about the not so able bodied, those confined to wheel chairs, the unsighted and those who have lost their hearing, or those with varying degrees of disabilities more often then not too deformed and grotesque to the eye. Those who have lost a limb or an arm and who are partially or fully paralysed due to one dibilitating illness or another or through the cruel hand of fate of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, those that we automatically feel sorry for and whisper a prayer to oneself  "there goes me but for the mercy of God".

Having kept awake late at night to watch the Paralympics currently going on in London, I have come to appreciate and respect the men and women who I describe here in above because unlike their able bodied relatives some of their achievements and accomplishments go beyond what you would think was humanly possible given their physical and sometimes mental disabilities.

Men and women on wheelchairs suddenly transformed into agile swimmers once in the water some without even the benefit of arms to propel themselves as they swim seemingly pushed along by sheer determination alone, or the long jumpers who gauge their jumps by a series of calls and noises made by their guides and which calls for pin drop silence in the stadium so that they can hear their guides give the necessary commands, or the blind swimmers whose guides have to pat their heads with a long paddle so that they do not smash their heads against the finishing rails while doing the free style, or the armless back stroke swimmers who have to grip a towel with their teeth at the start so as not to drown, or the archer gripping and aiming his bow with his feet and mouth and with uneering accuracy at the target, or the blind runners and sprinters who have to have an accompanying guide shadowing their every move lest they stumble and hurt themselves on the hard surface of the tartan track........I could go on and on at the level a human being without the benefit of the arms, legs and mental faculties that those of us who are able bodied take for granted can go through to to show that surely disability is not inability.

I celebrate their sheer determination and applaud each one of them unequivocally whenever they climb upon the rostrum to receive their medals because their challenges and stories are what many would consider insurmountable but which they have taken in their stride and decided to live as normal a life as they can, breaking records and pushing themselves to their limits like their able bodied counterparts.