Differently-Abled People Remind Us of the Value of Compassion

“I can’t help but feel that some imbalance in the world first caused neuro-atypical people to be needed and then brought us into being,” ~ Naoki Higashida

Naoki Higashida is profoundly autistic. He is largely non-verbal, and he has typical autistic traits – he jumps, he has meltdowns, and he finds it difficult to make eye contact. He is also the most translated Japanese author after Haruki Murakami.

His first book The Reason I Jump was one of the most widely read books by parents with children on the autism spectrum. The book helped break many myths about autism and provided pathbreaking insights into the human brain. For instance, the inability to make friends is not because they don’t want to, but because they worry about the sort of impression they are going to make. However, nature is their best friend because autistic people, like nature, are non-judgmental.

In his latest book, Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8, one of Higashida’s most striking ideas is that there is a specific reason why people with autism and other special needs exist. “I can’t help but feel that some imbalance in the world first caused neuro-atypical people to be needed and then brought us into being,” he writes. “Those who are determined to live with us and not give up on us are deeply compassionate people, and this kind of compassion must be a key to humanity’s long-term survival.” This ability of special needs people to fundamentally raise human consciousness through compassion is what I believe is the real impact of people with disabilities.

Ranked a great virtue in numerous philosophies, compassion is considered in almost all the major religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues. The word “compassion” has often been wrongly defined as “pity for someone else” (sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others). The real definition of compassion is the response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help them. It is a combination of empathy and suffering (compassion is thus related in origin, form, and meaning to the English noun “patient” – the one who suffers).

To read more, please visit the original link on gratefulness.org

Disclaimer: Article republished here with prior permission from the author, V R Ferose.