The quote I have written above is a very popular one. This quote is often used when someone judges a person without knowing everything about them. Today I am not talking of law, but a personal experience that I have taken from my school life. I would like to share that with the readers.
Persons with disabilities (PwDs) are often underestimated in sports, especially when they are between able-bodied persons. A bit of law, but a PwD can go to the schools where able-bodied persons are learning, and here I am not going to go into the debate of whether PwDs should go to special schools! Let us come back to the story. Schools conduct sports events for their students and there are various sports events such as 100m race, hurdles, chess and many more. This is the time when students show their talents in different sports.
Before we go into the story, just to give a context, I am a person with low vision disability. I cannot see small things which are far from my eyes. So much so that, when I am reading a book, I have to bring the book nearly 3 cm closer to my eyes to read it properly.
Since I am good at chess, I took that event with another sporting event which is the 110m hurdles race. Due to my low vision disability, my friends were shocked by this choice of mine. Yes, it is true that it has potential danger, but what should I do? I was very much interested in participating in it.
But the worst thing that generally happens is that people often engage in unwanted gossip about me taking part in such events. Some of my friends started to joke about me and asked me to withdraw from the event. Till now, the teachers didn’t know about it.
Due to all these jokes and gossip, I made my mind to show them that I can do it. On the day of the event, even some teachers started asking me to not participate in it. Their intention might not have been bad, (to discourage me or underestimate me) but I was very angry after hearing them say this. One of the teachers said “tum ye sab nahi kar paoge, tum withdraw kar lo” (You would not be able to do all this, you should withdraw) and started laughing.
My turn came. I was so charged by all of these things that I made my mind to show the whole school that I can do it. I started off and as I was crossing each hurdle, the audience was shocked on one hand, and was cheering me on, on the other hand. To the bewilderment of my friends and teachers who thought that I would not even finish the race due to my disability, I completed it in much faster than the able-bodied persons. Certainly, I didn’t win the race as there were people who were faster than me, but I nonetheless did win the race in my own way.
The key takeaway from the experience that I was privy to are twofold-
First, that disability is not a barrier if you think you can achieve the goal. It does not mean that the disability is gone, it is just that your ambition to achieve the goal is greater than the disability.
Second, that we should wait for the right time to come to slam the answer on the face of those who had underestimated us in some way. I think if I was to correct them or say fight with my friends about what they said about me, it would not have been the correct way to go about it. I think the more accurate way is to show them the same by your performance. That will make them review their positions.
I hope I get the power to dodge the hurdles of life in the same way, and hope the same for everyone!