Yesterday, I met a friend who is incapable of reading Chinese fluently. When he reads, each word is bumping with random wrong orders, so he must pause at each word to understand the meaning. When watching Netflix, it’s impossible for him to read the subtitle, so he has to watch with Chinese dubbing. That is so-called Dyslexia, which affects 3 ~ 7% of the population, and up to 20% have some degree of this disability.

That shocked me for a while. It’s unbelievable for me to think someone was born with this disease. If I cannot read, It’s hard for me to learn anything. Most of the knowledge in the world is written in words… It’s hard to learn a second language because I have to learn it in my native language, and it limits the possibility to do anything.

As a software engineer, I grow up in an environment everyone is “smart”. Everyone should have the ability to study and learn new information every day. Stupidness or ignorance only means laziness. Writing code or inspecting the documentation needs a lot of reading. Even the right to equality before the law as a citizen to participate in the civil rights, I have to election or referenda, and that takes a lot of reading skills.

The more I think, the more I feel that I should not take the blessing for granted. I should soften my heart more to humbly treat others.