When people
visit the ward in Demir Kapija, in which people with severe disabilities live,
they see people lying confined in cots, in distorted positions, voicing unarticulated
voices. They are happy to see visitors, sometimes agitated or even angry. It is
a scene that makes some people cry. Even if they have been there many times
before. Why do we cry in Demir Kapija?
One reason
is that we are sad to see people who have been so unfortunate, by birth or by
their life. Sympathy for them. A
tribute to fate.
Moreover, we
are saddened by injustice, by horrid conditions,
in which people ‘live’. Packed in a limited space, the smell of urine, humanity
sprouting only occasionally out of crevices of an institution. Sad conditions
and sad is the fact that human society still does these crimes. Sad loss of
hope that prevents people to grow.
Not only
sympathy for the unfortunate, not only grief of injustice and despair, high intensity of emotion makes us cry
on a back ward of an institution.
The people we
meet there show their emotions
directly, they do not have the usual props to garnish them. Cannot hide feelings
by empty talk, by ‘rational’ explanations, by subtleties of social interaction,
by staging them with costumes and framing them by scenes. They are direct and
emotional.
The
emotions are the quintessence of their being, and of being human. It is by
emotions that we relate to each other as human beings in such situations, there
are the avenue of bonding. We have to feel in order to be with them. We have to
feel a lot. There is no other way to be with people who are by their virtue (nature),
and institutional culture, stripped off anything human but feelings.
In such,
intense, situations, often we feel sadness and start crying. We can feel also joy
and happiness, even love and anger. If we do not want to feel these emotions,
we cannot stay with these noble people.
As
professionals, workers and visitors we should not hide these feelings, we
should not repress them – in order to maintain “the professional stance”. We
should embrace them and use them in our work. Not let them overwhelm us but
contain them in a firm vessel of our mission.
We should
remain aware that this is the essential part of our humanity: that it is part
of us, that we see in them what we could see in our children, parents, dear
ones. In fact, they are very near to us.
The grief we
experience should be a motive, motor, e-motion that will make us do our best,
to become advocates of the people, to understand how they live and to have a
reason to act so they will live a better life.
Let the tears ease our action.
[1] I wrote this vignette after a
session of personal planning. Some people admitted that visiting the ward had
made them cry. Myself too, I felt like crying. Crying is relief and a basic
feeling of humanity.
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