I work with individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. The work that I have chosen for myself is satisfying to me. However, when people express it stating the following, it makes me wonder am I doing something extraordinary.
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I have heard questions and statements such as; What a great job you do? Isn’t it rewarding? You are so blessed. You have a lots of patience. It must be so exhausting. God will bless you!
Well, for all these questions and statements. I would just say this. It is my job. I get paid for it. I studied for it. I love what I do. I should be passionate about my work. Am I doing something extra? Is it any different from what an accountant, mechanic, engineer does? I don’t think so. For example, I have colleagues who are accountants and managers who make budgets for these individuals with disabilities. They might have a different job, that is, they might not be directly involved with humans, their emotions and needs. But they serve them in their own ways.
I don’t know why we have to make people holier, because of their job responsibilities and natural traits. They probably do things because that is their natural talents or that is what they have learned and acquired to do as part of their job requirements.
For years, I have always been told great works of mother Teresa and Abdul Sattar Edhi. I respect both enormously. However, it usually makes people extremely uncomfortable when I tell them, that they were doing what they enjoyed to do. They were not doing anything extraordinary. I don’t mean from world’s perspective or in a negative way. But I mean it from their personal perspective. If something they did comes naturally to them, then I don’t think it is work. Do you think it’s a big deal?
Some human traits are God’s gift to some individuals. We might view them as great works that need to be rewarded and recognized. However, for them it is them being themselves which is nothing extraordinary.
Talents and traits are God’s gift. We don’t feel pressured when we are using them. Some learned behaviors that we acquired over a period of time become part of us.
What we have acquired over a period of time as a talent or what nature has bestowed upon us, sometimes being rewarded for it is not what we need but what the world wants us that we need.
