Have you ever thought to yourself: “I’d rather be dead than disabled?” It’s not an unusual reflection. Disability, in everyday thought, is associated with failure, with dependency and with not being able to do things. We feel sorry for disabled people, because we imagine it must be miserable to be disabled.
But in fact we’re wrong. It’s sometimes called the “disability paradox”. Surveys reveal people with disabilities consistently report a quality of life as good as, or sometimes even better than, that of non-disabled people. Impairment usually makes little difference to quality of life.This teaches us an important lesson – human beings are capable of adapting to almost any situation, finding satisfaction in the smaller things they can achieve, and deriving happiness from their relationships with family and friends, even in the absence of other triumphs.
Our appraisal of life with impairment may have less to do with reality than with fear and ignorance and prejudice. We wrongly assume that difficulties for people result in misery for people.
Unruly Bodies 
Life is harder with ‘disabilities’, but if you learn to adapt and embrace new passions, your life can be rich in other ways.
This totally fits into the discussion we had in class about how the world is what is disabling to the person with an impairment. In the clip we watched in class with Judith butler and Sunaura Taylor’s walk, Taylor talked about how she negotiates a world created to disable her. They discuss Taylor using her mouth to move a cup and how she takes daily walks with her feet never touching the ground. She exists in this world as a competent person who is not scared to ask for help when the world demands it from her. She just really reminds me of a person who lives her life, happily and disabled, two things that are by no means mutually exclusive.
reading your post have really inspire me to think differently when I am dealing with people who are physically disable. you are right when you said that most time we feel sorry for the person who is disable but whats more important is how that person feels about being disable. when someone who is disable realizes that their lives don’t have to stop because of their disability, but they have to find a different way of doing things , i believe that they can be happy in their disability. Good Post!!!!!!!!
Disabled person here! I have chronic pain and I often find myself thinking about how great my life is even with chronic pain. That being said, I really only think that when my pain levels are manageable and never when I’m in intense pain. My life is certainly different and comes with some extra challenges but I’m at least happy that I can still pursue my dreams and help others along the way.