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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Gordo's Thoughts / Happiness and fear

Happiness and fear

Written by Gordo on Thursday, July 3, 2008

Today, a contact on my MSN list attached the following comment to her username: “Be right or be happy?”

Whenever a question like this is phrased as such, it seems so obvious — be happy. However, as we’ve seen in the BIID circles, it doesn’t always work like that. Society has an obsession with being “right” at the cost of happiness; in other words, being both “normal” AND happy is at a premium.

This brings us to the topic of BIID. As Sean stated over here at Transabled.org, a recent Newsweek article provoked criticism and even outrage at the fact that people such as us do, in fact, exist. From what I’ve gathered, a large percentage of those who are outraged are upset because we are desiring/needing something that is considered abnormal, even though we will end up happier and more able to get on with our lives as a result. It seems that those people just want us to shut the hell up and accept our “able-bodiness.”

They don’t care about our happiness or mental well-being. They just want us to conform to what they see as acceptable. They see disability as something uncertain. For example, when someone suffers a spinal cord injury, one of the things that the patient often asks first is, “Will I ever walk again?” And the answer that the doctor gives is often vague, and almost never certain.

With this in mind, I think those people are outraged at us because they are afraid of the unknown. They don’t see us as people who want to be happy living life, but rather as a big question mark that they are scared of. And like people who are scared, they want to stay as far away from the scary thing as much as possible, or suppress it.

So they react with anger, hoping to use it like water against a fire, to quash the unknown condition of BIID. They are scared of what they don’t know and, as a result of their fear, they are blind to the impact on us that comes from living as able-bodied people, and blind to the fact that we are miserable and will continue to be unless we are able to acquire a disability.

This is more than fear; this is a phobia. Fear can a rational reaction, while phobias are irrational by definition. Whenever a person is more concerned about someone else being “right” rather than being happy, that person should stop him- or herself and look at that reasoning again, and ask him- or herself, “Would you rather be right or be happy?” and see what answer pops out.

If “happy” ends up to be the answer, then there is probably something irrational about the fear of BIID. It is an irrational phobia against disability; you might even go as far as to call it a “dis-phobia”. Because when you narrow it down, it is simply an irrational fear, and people are reacting with anger because they are afraid to learn more.

I am reposting this from something I said on another site, with some minor changes

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Tags: attitudes towards disabilities, BIID, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Disability, Disphobia, fear, happiness, mental wellness, phobia