Compassion – Where Does It Go?
Posted on May 16, 2008
As children we read stories about Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, Lambert the Sheepish Lion, Brother Bear, and Meet The Robinsons (I think this one is new). These stories are packed with lessons, although sometimes I wonder how many people have actually learned from them.
For example, as we all know, Dumbo is about an Elephant that is different. He is shunned for his “handicap” but is later welcomed back into the herd because he has a special talent – flying. The obvious lesson is not to judge others for being different because they might have a skill or offer something to society that we cannot. The same basic message about not judging people by appearances or differences are in the stories Lambert the Sheepish Lion and Brother Bear.
Sleeping Beauty starts out as a story of a husband and a wife trying to conceive a baby with no luck. The Disney’s Wonderful World of Reading book states “Long ago there lived a good king named Stefan. For many years King Stefan and his queen wished and wished for a child. At last their wish came true.” Sounds like infertility to me, how about you?
Finally, there is the message in Meet the Robinsons that teaches children about adoption. A boy is waiting to be adopted and longs to find his biological mother, but realizes he has a family and a great life in the future.
If we learn these stories at such a young age, what happens to the lessons? The other night a woman says to me “Infertility, yawn, who wants to hear about infertility. Let’s talk about the pregnant man, everyone wants to talk about the pregnant man.” What? My thought was, who the hell wants to talk about the pregnant man – I don’t. My guess is that they are 7.5 million people who don’t want to hear about the pregnant man either and would rather receive some information about how to manage their infertility.
Creative Commons image courtesy of Tim Zim.
» Filed Under Infertility, Personal Growth
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