Sean Caz­abon

The road to suc­cess has been and al­ways will be filled with dev­as­tat­ing re­sults, but what is im­por­tant is the lev­el of per­sis­ten­cy. There are times when doom and gloom sur­face to cre­ate a dull at­mos­phere, but with due dili­gence faith stands out and cast that shad­ow of hope that leads to the beau­ty of pa­tience.Some months ago while surf­ing the ca­ble tele­vi­sion chan­nels, I came up­on a doc­u­men­tary deal­ing with the life of a dis­abled young man who felt that his life was in­com­plete be­cause he lacked a per­ma­nent fe­male com­pan­ion or re­la­tion­ship.What kept my in­ter­est was the con­nec­tion be­tween his dis­abil­i­ty and the fact that he was un­able to have a se­ri­ous per­son to ex­press his love to.

The ques­tion he kept ask­ing was, is it the dis­abil­i­ty or a lack of re­spect? The an­swer is un­for­tu­nate­ly still un­solved.As the pro­gramme con­tin­ued he in­tro­duced his sex­u­al de­sires and as a re­sult he re­sort­ed to pros­ti­tu­tion. Here is where my in­ter­est peaked. Af­ter sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with his fa­ther, they came to the con­clu­sion that he should per­form the act with a pros­ti­tute. He did and he was sat­is­fied.From my point of view, one has to ask was his prob­lem solved. That de­pends on the per­son. Is it that all peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties find it dif­fi­cult to have re­la­tion­ships or is this an iso­lat­ed case?Af­ter check­ing around it seems that it de­pends on pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances.

For ex­am­ple, the per­son who was born with a dis­abil­i­ty or who at­tained a dis­abil­i­ty at an ear­ly age, might have a prob­lem find­ing com­pan­ion­ship but if the dis­abil­i­ty is due to some form of ac­ci­dent, whether ve­hic­u­lar or oth­er­wise, very rarely would an on­go­ing re­la­tion­ship dis­con­tin­ue be­cause of its depth. In this pro­gramme, a les­son was learned. Is there a prob­lem with­in the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty or is so­ci­ety still not pre­pared to ac­cept that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties are part of the whole world and not just to be tol­er­at­ed?To stay rel­e­vant to the point, the young man is still search­ing for a com­pan­ion, which leaves the thought that there must be the de­vel­op­ment of aware­ness with­in the dis­abled so­ci­ety. Love has the same mean­ing as al­ways so by show­ing equal af­fec­tion this odd be­lief that a dis­abil­i­ty de­bars some­one from love is just a fal­la­cy.

If pros­ti­tu­tion has to be used as a means of es­capism for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, then our so­ci­ety must be head­ing in a wrong or sad di­rec­tion. It could be said that these two ar­eas from the ori­gin of time, have been stig­ma­tised. One is nat­ur­al and the oth­er un­nat­ur­al. Which is which?My quest is with the dis­abled sit­u­a­tion. How could we as a so­ci­ety turn around the at­ti­tude of the dis­abled them­selves and those who feel that they are ex­clud­ed from a dis­abil­i­ty? The dis­abled is still treat­ed with scorn and dis­re­spect and this scar will on­ly be re­moved if so­ci­ety look deep with­in it­self and clean the murk that makes us feel su­pe­ri­or.If on­ly we all can join and make pos­i­tive and hope­ful con­tri­bu­tions then the op­pressed will no longer feel ex­clud­ed and with the in­volve­ment of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, so­ci­ety as a whole will treat each oth­er as though we all came from one source.

The young man and oth­ers like him who suf­fer the same fate and who are search­ing for that bal­ance in life must nev­er cast out faith for the con­queror of de­spair is faith. I am quite sure he is not the on­ly one go­ing through such prob­lems, the al­ter­na­tive he took might not be the cor­rect one but who is with­out sin, cast the first stone.There are so many ob­sta­cles that pre­vent per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties from leap­ing for­ward it is amaz­ing and very few are able to ex­press them­selves.I hope that by ex­press­ing their feel­ings gen­uine­ly, many more will grasp at the op­por­tu­ni­ty and let them­selves be heard. It feels good know­ing that some­one cares. This must be stat­ed in all quar­ters to en­sure that dis­abled or not, love and af­fec­tion must flow in or­der to have good and bal­anced re­la­tion­ships.The key to this dis­turb­ing so­lu­tion must come from prop­er parental guid­ance. As long as par­ents take con­trol of their chil­dren at an ear­ly or ten­der age and de­vel­op re­spect and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the chances of fail­ure will be­come rare.

In the good book it is said that we were cho­sen and not the oth­er way around. So if that is the case, then the ques­tion of who is dis­abled or not has no place in so­ci­ety. We are all God's chil­dren and should be treat­ed with to­tal re­spect.I hope that those fam­i­lies who have peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties with­in them will keep search­ing for bet­ter stan­dards, poli­cies, and laws. It is im­per­a­tive that equal op­por­tu­ni­ties be giv­en even when it comes to per­son­al re­la­tion­ships.It is time that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties be viewed as hu­man be­ings and not as be­ing dif­fer­ent. Tech­nol­o­gy has evened up the scales of life so we can all live to love and re­spect each oth­er. It is not a dif­fi­cult task to mend this gap which push­es col­lab­o­ra­tion out the door and as a re­sult the dis­abled will not face the ug­ly con­di­tions they present­ly un­der­go.