Mild Discomfort?

Yesterday, while waiting in the mall on an adventure, a fellow approached me and told me his life story.  It was one of those moments that usually cause discomfort, and not for a good reason.  The gentleman was physically challenged, was bound to a wheel-chair and had difficulty speaking grammatically.  My instinct is generally to escape, which I'm ashamed of.

Last month, my friend Ar sent me a link to a video.  She has a similar response to mine, and we both found the video very helpful.  It's almost 10 minutes, and is a news segment on an autistic girl who eventually was able to express herself with the help of a computer.

The above video helped me a lot.  Part of my problem is a fear of becoming responsible for another person, and I don't mean in their being unable to operate in the world, but I guess I mean emotionally.  I am very cautious with who I let myself get close to and who I let depend on me.  I feel (rationally or not) that someone additionally challenged by their environment might rely extra-much on me, and I'd fail.  I've bailed on a friend before, which was stupidly related to my frustration at being unable to help them.  And yet I know I've been a burden to others.

Anyway, the video is excellent for helping establish very clearly in my mind how complete a person someone who has difficulty expressing themselves physically and verbally still is.  So, I didn't excuse myself while in the mall the other day, but stayed and chatted for an hour, with the perspective that the person was the same as me, but that we had a translation that was imperfect.  The whole visual-auditory system humans use to communicate is imperfect, though I dread the future where the "direct" neural communication I generally champion takes hold.  Dread.

The conversation was still hard.  Thanks to his challenges, he's been seriously abused and defrauded, and treated poorly regularly, and that's beyond having most people avoid him.  He had reasonable opinions on war, peace, liberality, religion, politics, and love.  I almost wish I could write about them here, but I don't think that would be polite to him.  I'm not perfectly happy with my current life, and I hate I can be so melancholic while another has had to adapt to survive in miserable conditions.  Not to demean him by describing them as miserable: he himself said he doesn't have any friends, and that that's quite hard.

I almost hate myself for being almost relieved that I didn't runaway.  It feels like patting myself on the back.  "Congrats, you did something reasonable rather than being a total jerk, GREAT JOB!"  Especially because I could have invested myself more, offered to be around or be a friend.  I've done that with others, others whose life situations are much more like mine, University children whose concerns are as petty as mine.  I'm weak.

I tell myself that in the future, I'll contribute a lot to helping address inequities.  I'll help conquer homelessness, I'll ensure everyone has access to an environment they can feel comfortable in.  I wish I could guarantee everyone a friend, too. :)