Imaginary Strangers

I spent almost every Friday afternoon in October and November completing my service learning at Giant Steps Therpeutic Riding Center in Petaluma, CA. The following quote from one of the books we read in class helped me make sense of my service experience.

…the great lesson of anthropology is that when the stranger is no longer imaginary, but real and present, sharing a human social life, you may like or dislike him, you may agree or disagree; but, if it is what you both want, you can make sense of each other in the end. (Appiah Cosmopolitanism pg.99)

The important message that I have taken away from my service learning is that children are children, they are not their disability. It is easy to look at an autistic boy and think of him as an autistic, but really he is just another child with numerous things to offer the people that interact with him. The time I spent at Giant Steps was time that I wouldn’t usually take to laugh and spend time with people, but when I was there, even though I was working, I got that opportunity. The children that were once strangers became a part of my life. I had a connection directly to them even if it was a small one. They are no longer imaginary strangers. The time I spent with them gave me time to start to make sense of them and even if I didn’t always know exactly why they were there it became unimportant because no matter what their disability they were ultimately there for the experience just as I was even if their experience was different from mine it still connected us.