Caricatures: Loving those unlike ourselves

Caricatures are a bit like my first-time country fair experience – you see the oddities and make exaggerated conclusions on matters that you only get to see or know for a very short span of time. Caricatures are interesting when you first make them, but then, if you’ve never seen the real deal, you mistake it for the worst or funniest representation of reality.

Disability is a heart issue

I come from a country where someone sitting on a wheelchair is necessarily perceived as lower than the one standing. Literally, figuarately, socio-economically, whatever. He has no name, no significance, no identity save in that rusty wheelchair. He has already been written off as a loser, unfit for anything good. Some poor soul has to push his wheelchair and his life forward. Therefore ( and therefore ), someone walking by looks down upon him with pity. Poor loser. Almost instantly all of the beholder’s communicative devices begin to shrink and sink low. Eyes droop, smiles dip, heads hang low almost in shame for someone else’s estate.

I know that feeling. I used to do exactly the same. Until God took away a crib and placed a wheelchair into my arms