Giovanna Spantigati

The self-esteem of a disabled person. The sentence itself is negative. The word "disabled" can put self-esteem off.

First we must avoid to put ourselves in his shoes. See the world as we see it.

It is obvious to think: I wish he were like me, but I do not want to be like him. And this is the mistake that creates prejudice. In the others towards him and in him towards the others.

We must revise reality. Not pretending not to see it, but looking at it in a more open, global way, with greater consciousness. We need to make a big effort because we must go beyond our senses, beyond our ideas. It's something that makes you get in deep contact with your soul and the souls of the others.

Another mistake to avoid is trying to understand "why." Through the glasses we use to read the meaning of life we'll never understand it. Using our reality, our channels it means to judge again. We state that this is not the way it should be and therefore there must be a reason, a justification so that we can accept a "different" situation from what was expected.

The obstacle that prevents us to change is fear. Fear fixes limits, prevents you from doing, from being. When there is no fear there is what we call the miracle, because we don't know how to understand things rationally. Eliminating fear does not mean you are reckless. It means that full self-awareness will allow you to act, to be. We can start from a simple step: to teach one another to love. But first, before teaching, we must learn. So the first step is to learn to love each other. Inconvenient responsibility. Yet everything starts from there. How many times we say it does not matter if I'm sick, the important thing is that my son is not sick. And we think this is love and selflessness! This thought transference is negative because in doing so we teach our children that we must deny ourselves first, and that we cannot love ourselves. Altruism does not mean to sacrifice our life and ourselves. And we misinterpret the word selfishness. What does it mean to love? It means to learn to enjoy happiness, to live an intense life and full of joy everyday if we learn to remove our fears and sense of guilt. And then love means having self-esteem. That is for everybody, whether they are disabled or not.There is no difference. So let's start from here.



Giovanna Spantigati