Shouts From Down Under

A blog about Carly again, because they want to be understood

Imagine this is your situation:

You cannot speak one word, in any language; not even your mum, or dad, understand you, let alone others, no matter how well trained or educated.
You have grown up learning about your surroundings, only to have a major part of what you learned removed regularly from your memory, or severely restricted, by seizure activity.
You exist each day in a fog. You struggle to hear, see, feel or smell your world, or those around you.

You eventually understand other's speech or gestures, and sometimes you figure out the most intricate and complex matters in life, but you find that most if not every person you are in contact with, no matter how loving and well-meaning, assume you only function at an age of a very young child (18 months old) and couldn't possibly know anything.

You realise everyone believes you are stupid. You have almost no way of getting across to anyone how you feel, even about everyday issues such as feeling cold, hot, hungry, sad, angry, or, that someone is giving you a hard time on the sly.

How do you feel? Do you now, picturing yourself in such a persons body, with no escape; how do you feel? Are you frustrated? Are you angry? Are you sad? Are you exasperated with everyone, and most of all at yourself for losing your temper, or whatever else you do that you cannot even control?

What if you commanded your body, but it didn't obey? What if the few words, or one or two words that took you years to learn, came out as filthiness and insults, even though you just wanted to fit in with everyone else?

The next time you come across someone who is challenged, please don't assume they are stupid, or aren't thinking just like you are. Please don't speak to them as if they are deaf, or as if they are stupid. Watch them carefully. Their expressions, their moods, their needs and wants, their reactions however slight.
Read them, not their grunts, screams, cries, mutterings or other vocalisation. Read them, in the most basic of human languages.

LIFE

Read them as if you were in their position, with their limitations, but with your present level of understanding, and thinking. Read their needs, desires, hopes, dreams, irritations, insecurities, assumptions.

Then realise that you may still not come close to how they really think. How much harder is it for them to know, given their physical and mental status?
Realise, like I'm just beginning to, that you may be wrong. They may well be just as people assume. They may not have any understanding.
But it's highly possible the dummkopf may be us.

Is the hole in their heads, or ours?



That, dear fellow humans, is the question, and Carly Fleischmann probably could tell us the answer.

What I've learned the past two days, is that for those who can understand, and are trapped in a body that projects zero understanding; it's not people withholding things from them so much, that snowballs their frustration and anger, but it's that people don't UNDERSTAND them.

When people assume stupidity or lack of understanding, then a door to improvement and development, a door to growth, a door to closer and better relationships is firmly closed, often in the person with disabilities face.

That would make anyone thunder with anger, and seem like an arrogant, violent, silly human.

Who has the excuse? Us people who walk around every day without these problems? Or these folks who cannot help how they are?
We (I) must learn patience, learn tolerance, learn forgiveness, learn unconditional love.

That's the only way I can think of, to be of help. We can take the time to let them know that we DO want to understand, the people with disabilities might have a better chance of penetrating the wall of misunderstanding that may be their never ending prison.
Let's not put the bars on the windows and doors, the lock on the gate, the cuffs on their hands, because we couldn't be bothered, and couldn't see past our own assumptions, into their possibly miserable existence.

Do yourself, and these people, a favour and have a look through the videos here. Because this is what I'm sayin'

https://www.youtube.com/user/CarlyFleischmann/videos

Images of Carly
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=carly+fleischmann&biw=1366&bih=705&source=lnm...

Sparky