Feel special, world

Today I'm going to return to a subject I can't help but return to: Autism.

I guess I should start by saying that I was diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder in my early teens. It's not terribly obvious to people who don't know what to look for in my behavior or speech, most people don't even notice. What it really boils down to, to me, is this: my brain doesn't work along the same lines and processes as the typical human brain, but I can make it work well enough to function well in a world of neurotypical people.

Today's story is meant to illustrate the importance of understanding the difference in brain function between a neurotypical and someone with autism/Asperger's, and on a larger scale, the connections that can be made between people of similar thought patterns. It's actually something that happened a while ago, it just came up in conversation recently.

I have a friend who works/worked (honestly not sure if this is still ongoing) with mentally disabled kids. The people at the place he worked had been having trouble making any sort of connection with one little boy in particular; he wouldn't talk to anyone. So, this friend brought it up to me one day, and I got curious about him and started asking about him: his habits, what he liked and didn't like, etc. He mentioned a few things, and one of them was that the kid loved to touch things. Not just touch them, but to feel them, to take in their texture. Almost immediately I had a thought, so I told it to him:

Bring him a piano.

A few days later I got a message back saying that it had worked, that the kid loved the piano. I'm not sure if he was actually learning how to play, but that's irrelevant both to him and to me. I knew, somehow, from a personal understanding the way the autistic brain works, that he would like it. Not even necessarily learning music, but the piano itself: the way it sounds, feels, the way the keys work, the way you can combine different keys to make new sounds, all of it.

Pause for a second and understand the magnitude of what I just said. I've never met this kid. I live fifty miles from him. And in some senses, I know him better than the people who spend almost every day with him.

I doubt I could do that with just any autistic kid. When my friend described him, I almost immediately thought of myself. All the little things about him were close to, if not just like the little quirks I have and had when I was younger. I knew what he'd like because I was dealing with me. I knew, from personal experience, how his brain worked, on a level that few other people can even approach.

I think it should be a requirement, maybe to graduate high school or college, or to live in any given community, or whatever, to help out in teaching a kindergarten class. Maybe once a month, maybe just once. Every class has problem students, the kind that the average teacher just can't connect with, no matter how hard they try. But there is probably someone, somewhere, that thinks along close enough lines to that kid to make a connection between what would help them and what would help the kid. This would just speed up figuring that out, and help establish an effective learning and teaching process, and more importantly, a connection between the kid and the rest of the world, a link bridging the gap between them and everyone else.

Because no one wants to feel alone.

Raised on ideals

I've been having this recurring idea lately. It's about movies. Movies and television and books. Anything with a story in it.

People--not everyone, but many people--have stories they like to "lose themselves" in, to just read or watch and analyze or project themselves onto the characters or what have you. Sometimes fictional, sometimes non-fictional, sometimes it's a favorite book series, or a movie you could watch on loop until the end of time. You love to watch the characters move through their lives, watch them change their worlds and their worlds change them. And then at some point, you turn off the TV or slide your plastic-encased, tasseled bookmark back between the pages and go on with your life.

It's a release. It's a break from reality. Some people just like to immerse themselves in a world not their own. Some want a story and a world where everything important is given to you, and every dilemma is always resolved. And of course, there are plenty of us who want to "become" the characters in their story. The problem comes in when you need to break from your break. Reality intrudes, and your world goes from running off a script and captivating you at every turn to... well, whatever you were getting away from in the first place.

I'm a part of a generation raised on Disney films, adventures, happy endings and leaving the real world behind. We're fed story after story where every moment is suspenseful,the couple always ends up together, the hero dies to save the world, and the villain dies alone. We're fantasy junkies. As we get older our fantasy worlds grow deeper and more complex, but it all runs off a preordained script, with all but the most interesting parts cut out. Everything is surreal, and everything is captivating. Comparatively, reality is a letdown. And once we finish growing up, after decades of being taunted by ideal worlds, we're thrust into our own boring, flawed, and plotless one.

So what happens when people stop coming back from the fantasy?

Just because it happens all around you doesn't make it real. What happens when we reach a critical mass of "story exposure" and start altering or rejecting the reality before our eyes, just to make it fit? The people who lose themselves in their stories find themselves so desperate to cling to them that their own psyches start altering the world they see. The people who look for resolution and meaning in their stories break down in a world where resolution is never a promise and meaning isn't handed to you. And somewhere on the edges of both are the people broken by the sheer weight of the contrast between reality and fantasy, who would kill themselves either to end the torture of their dreams always out of reach or to escape a world that they know will never satisfy them.

I talked to a friend briefly about this at lunch a few days ago. She thought it was at least plausible.

I started writing a short story once based on this exchange, between the two main characters on an apartment rooftop:

"Someday, I want to jump."

"Why would you do a stupid thing like that?"

"Because I know that someday I'll feel so wonderful, so beautiful... so fantastic that I know if I try, I'll be able to fly."

"Well, what happens if you can't?"

"Then I'm not sure I'd want to survive the fall."

Something like that anyway. It's an illustration of this idea. What our hearts seek is not always something the world can give us, and so we try our best either to live without it or to create it, even if no one else can know. The story was meant to illustrate subjectivity and to disillusion people about the idea of reality. Part of the way through the story, she does jump, for just that reason, and the fall kills her. But through the course of the story, the other character understands her point of view more and more, and through knowing her and his interactions with two other characters, he reaches the same point she did, and the story ends with his first step off the same edge. It's left for the reader to determine what happened next, and what it means, illustrating subjective reality even outside of the story itself.

I should finish it. I guess it's kind of ironic that I study physics, a subject that falls apart without an objective reality, or a frame underlying all that we see.

I'm writing this so that I can remember it. I don't know when I will or won't remember something very well, I've forgotten things seconds after writing them or doing them. My memory is... strange.

Well, goodbye. Field Theory isn't exactly going to do itself.