Is the word “disability” inappropriate?

My pondering on descriptive words around disabilities

Officially, I am 50% disabled. I have a disability ID that states this, but even more so, it’s visible because my hands, fingers, feet and toes look different than standard 10-finger hands. What I have is called Split-hand and -foot malformation. It runs in my family and I had a 50:50 chance to get it from my dad & I won that genetic jackpot ;-).

When thinking about the word “disability”, if I disseminate the word itself, it is “dis” and “abled”. From latin “dis” means a ‘lack of’ or ‘absence’, resulting in a “lack of ability” of something.

When I feel into this and look back at my life, I never felt that I was lacking something, other than a couple of fingers and toes. I was always able to do everything that others were doing, some things I was even better at compared to many others, especially when it came to painting and drawing.

The only thing I was not able to do is to play the flute, a piano, a violin, or for that matter, many other instruments. In that sense, I was/am dis-abled. I guess if I really wanted to & would have put effort into it, I might have made it somehow anyways, not sure though if I would be able to play pieces of Mozart or Chopin, but many 10-fingered people can’t do that either, it doesn’t feel like a big loss for me.

The main point being: I am fully, perfectly able to live a thriving life.

I do not take offense in the word “disability” because at its core it shows one aspect of me that is true: I can’t play certain instruments because I don’t have ten fingers.

I also feel that people who mistreat others, display socially unacceptable traits and behave like pigs, without having an official diagnosis of a mental disability, are more disabled than me with my 8.3 fingers. Mainly because life is more difficult for them to manage, as people won’t accept un-social behavior and mistreatment.

Should the word “disability” be changed to differently-abled or handicapped or should we say “person with disability” instead of “disabled person”? I honestly don’t know what is the best thing to do. For me personally, I don’t mind any of those descriptions, I don’t take any of them personally, nor will I ever feel offended by them.

The thing is, I am aware that words are powerful, but at the same time, to nitpick about them will often confuse people even more and…