Developmentally disabled people, aside from the limits imposed by their disabilities, are full humans, with the full range of human needs and feelings. What you are looking at here is a first date between two such disabled people.

True enough, there are things that disabled people cannot do, but those limits are specific: they don’t negate the full spectrum of abilities, only certain ones. And those which are not negated ought not be ignored or suppressed.

That is, we must default to seeing them as full people. As Simone Weil once noted, “The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.” And that giving of attention is something we must learn to do.

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So, before you go back to the mundane, decide that in the future, you’ll see the sick and suffering as full people, not objects in categories. Because if you can, you’ll begin to see everyone as a full person rather than an object in a category… and the world will be much improved by it.