From the author: As one of my teachers said, the distance from normal physical capabilities to limited ones is one traffic accident. Limited physical capabilities are obvious in contrast to the limited capabilities of the soul, but physical limitations can be covered by a rich personal and professional life. Here you will find a wonderful video on the topic: Literary Newspaper, interview WITHOUT BARRIERS When we meet new people, we involuntarily evaluate them: what attracts us, what repels us, what worries us. We compare with ourselves - in what ways we are similar and in what ways we are not. Often all future relationships depend on the first impression. Now imagine that a new friend has a physical disability - he is almost blind, or has difficulty hearing, or uses a wheelchair. He is a person with disabilities. I’m writing these lines and trying to remember: do I have many friends among disabled people? Perhaps there are only three, and all are younger than me. As a child, I did not meet such people either in kindergarten, or at school, or at college. Why is that? One country, one city, one life - but it’s like a wall between us. I decided to talk about this oddity with Evgenia VARLAMOVA, a candidate of psychological sciences. “In the pool where I go, I constantly see a boy without legs, he swims, like everyone else, on the common paths. But in general, unfortunately, it’s rare. This is, of course, partly a legacy of the Soviet era. Then it was almost impossible to meet a person in a wheelchair at school, at college, or at the cinema. It was unspoken that there was no place for imperfect people in an ideal society. It reached the point of blasphemy. After the Great Patriotic War, many crippled soldiers were sent to settle on Valaam. Even for disabled children, special boarding schools were created, from where, growing up, they ended up in special artels, where they filled cigarettes with tobacco, bent paper clips and performed other simple work. Necessary work! But who knows how many bright, talented people were unable to develop their abilities precisely because their limited capabilities were further limited by a system of virtual isolation from society. Only a few broke through the invisible wall, and then the result was the legless pilot Maresyev or the poet Asadov, who lost his sight at the front. But each of them found their calling even before the tragedy. Disabled children had a more difficult time: they grew up in special boarding schools, did not go hungry, did not freeze, but they were deprived of the attention that a child has in the family, and they were supposed to have a common future - say, assembling electrical sockets and plugs. – Are things different now? – Fortunately, now the situation is changing dramatically. The emphasis is not on collective education, but on life in a family, where each child is the only one, and the main thing for parents is to help him develop all the abilities given by nature. In addition, after studying, a person will have to create his own family, and for someone who grew up outside a family, it is much more difficult to do this: there is no experience, not even the experience of mistakes. – But in addition to family, a person also needs a team. – People with disabilities actively communicate on the Internet, unite, defend their rights at demonstrations, for example, the Association of Disabled Automobiles. They go to the theater, play sports, drive a car, participate in the Paralympic Games, and in city sports competitions such as wheelchair running. In short, many people with disabilities do not experience a lack of communication at all and live full lives, although this requires considerable additional effort. – Does world experience help us? - It helps, a lot. The world is now united, new information spreads across the planet in a matter of hours. What is done in London or Tokyo is quickly learned in Moscow. We no longer remember that quite recently even a toilet for the disabled was exotic in our country. Now many underground passages, supermarkets, new metro stations, and ordinary residential buildings are equipped with ramps. Recently, having returned from a trip, near my house on Mira Avenue, I noticed strangepedestrian paths and at first I was surprised: why make them so uneven and rough? Then I realized that this is for people with visual impairments; they will feel the path with their feet and will be able to cross the street safely. I have not seen this abroad, it is possible that this useful innovation was born here. In general, Moscow is gradually becoming a barrier-free city. The more often we see people in wheelchairs in transport, in the theater, in the swimming pool, the faster we will get used to them. This will stop attracting unnecessary attention. Man in a wheelchair? Fine. The word “disabled” has a Latin root, literally translated – weak, devalued. But humanity is gradually moving from the selfish formula “A healthy mind in a healthy body” to understanding how powerful the spirit can be in a weak body, how valuable the personality of a person who has overcome an illness can be. The famous psychologist Erik Erikson was an athlete, and at the age of 19 he received a serious injury that led to disability. However, this did not stop him from becoming a famous psychologist and being an effective therapist. Erickson's depressed clients saw a smart, strong, self-confident person in front of them and thought: if he manages to be like this without legs, is it really impossible for us, healthy people, to regain our joy in life? The term “people with disabilities” came to us from English. I would like to emphasize the word “physical”. After all, each of us has limitations, and not just physical ones. We are limited by temperament, education, work and family experience, and the size of our innate talent. Even our ambitions are different. The goal of a person is precisely to use personal resources wisely, taking into account his limitations. The world knows many outstanding people who have made important discoveries and written wonderful books, despite their disabilities. English astrophysicist Stephen Hawking was confined to a wheelchair for the last thirty years of his life, could not even speak and communicated with the world through a computer voice modulator. Nevertheless, he created the superstring theory, which claimed to explain the structure of the world at the level of elementary particles. He was married twice, had three children, and even flew on a jet in preparation for the space flight he had dreamed of all his life. David Blunket is visually impaired and walks with a guide dog, but this did not stop him from holding the post of British Home Secretary for several years. The great artist Toulouse-Lautrec walked on crutches. The legendary US President, winner of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt, used a wheelchair. And we have a wonderful example: Nikolai Ostrovsky, one of the most popular Russian writers of the twentieth century, was blind and bedridden from the age of eighteen. We say “people with disabilities,” but who knows exactly where the boundaries of these capabilities are? Genius fit within the boundaries of the same Hawking. By condescendingly leaving disabled people with monotonous work in artels, are we not losing Hawking or Blanket in these patterns? Starting in 2011, Moscow will begin implementing the idea of ​​inclusive education in schools and kindergartens in the city: that is, directors will not be able to refuse a child with disabilities to study alongside ordinary children. However, a new problem has arisen: unfortunately, not all parents want to see a disabled child in the same class with their child. But I am an optimist and believe that our society is moving towards greater humanity and tolerance. – I really like the slogan of the founder of the Olympic Games for the disabled: “Forget about what is lost, think about what remains.” “These wonderful words went around the world. But I love no less the poems of our compatriot Gennady Golovaty, a talented poet who spent his whole life fighting for the rights of the disabled: THE BLIND CANNOT LOOK ANGER. THE MUTE CANNOT SCREAM FURIOUSLY. THE ARMLESS CANNOT HOLD WEAPONS. THE LEGLESS CANNOT STEP FORWARD. BUT THE MUTE MAY LOOK ANGER. BUT – THE BLIND CAN SCREAM