Up All Night: Self-Identifying

For many years, I've struggled trying to decide whether I should self-identify in academic settings and in job applications as a person with Asperger's Syndrome. While I've had difficulties in social settings, I always sailed through my academic work until I graduated from high school. I got by pretty well, so I never saw the necessity of raising questions about a "disability", when I wasn't sure that this condition was disabling me at all.

Another issue that complicates my thinking arises when I compare my situation to the situations of other people who have a less high-functioning form of Asperger's. I've been very fortunate. That I can even write these words and tell you about my life is a major success. That I've found the self-awareness to question my own decisions and analyze my interactions with other people has been a major milestone and a great gift.

There are many people who have suffered through much greater impairments than I have. When I perceive that I'm indistinguishable from a typical person of my age, I can hardly justify to myself that I should self-identify as having some sort of disability. The only person I've met who's spotted me as someone on the autism spectrum was another college student with very high-functioning Asperger's -- which is extremely funny once you think about it.

Today, I heard some of my friends discuss some mutual acquaintances of ours who happen to have Asperger's. When my friends mention some of their unsettling experiences with other people who have Asperger's, it's hard for me to discuss my experiences: I'm torn between feeling sympathy for people following a similar outline and a crushing need to defend myself. I know very well that my lack of finesse with social skills in the past has at times brought me great chagrin.

I used to never make eye contact when I was speaking to other people. My dad would sit with me and drill me. He made me look him in his eyes over, and over, and over again. The overwhelming blueness of each of his irises encouraged me to concentrate beyond any ability that I knew I had. I swam into socialization on the cresting tide of that blueness.

I never knew how to join the conversations of other people. I had a terrible habit of interrupting people in the middle of their sentences whenever I saw a group of people I don't know and I wanted to approach them. I've always been pretty talkative for an introvert - since I finally started talking after a delay of a few years, I've barely stopped for breath. My feelings of anxiety and insecurity in social settings haven't helped - time has always ran fast for me when I'm around lots of people I don't know. I still have trouble finding a way to relax, slow down, and remain patient without disengaging entirely.

Every time someone tells me that they would never know I had Asperger's Syndrome is a victory lap. I have spent so much time and effort trying to be like my peers. Why do I want to identify myself through the prism of a disability, when I'd rather identify myself by the struggle I've undertaken to overcome my condition? Perhaps that's the best reason to self-identify: so I can provide some frame of reference for the sustained campaign I've waged against my own mind to free a little bit more of my soul.

Up All Night: Honesty

I love my friends. Joking and trading stories with my friends makes everything I do meaningful. I would choose not to live if I had to live alone. I've never realized how badly I needed other people in my life until I moved to a new place and had to establish an entire life for myself! The course is mine...time to play. Friends are one of things I have now that I haven't always had. I've been extremely diligent in my pursuit of learning social etiquette. However much I've embarrassed myself while travelling this path, I'm glad that I'm on it.

***

Earlier today, I swam with a few of my friends. I'm not an accomplished swimmer. Mostly I enjoy stretching, floating, and kicking my arms and legs around in a wayward and uncoordinated fashion. When I was very young, I had just moved into a new house with my parents. We had an above-ground pool. I was playing in it with some other kids my age, and my parents made me leave suddenly. They told me that I had to leave because some people were working on our deck, but all the other kids were still there. I found out that I had to leave because we were all going to eat. That's when I discovered the concept of the "white lie".

"White lies" are like breathing to me. So many people around me do it, and now I catch myself telling them so often, that I'm no longer sure if honesty in itself is a virtue. There are so many other priorities that I've observed people to place over honesty: comfort, personal safety, simplicity, time-saving, peace, politeness, discretion, flattery...there are so many reasons not to be honest that I can't even list most of them.

I still prefer friends who are too honest over friends who are too polite. I'll take honesty over politeness any day of the week. When I hear negativity or criticism, it's easy for me to have hurt feelings. It's easy because I tend to take criticism personally. That's the problem: what if people didn't take the observations of other people personally? Every human being is equally fallible, makes mistakes, screws up, is ignorant about most things...there's no shame in being wrong. There's only shame in refusing to make things right.

I prefer people who help me overcome challenges and improve my character over people who pretend that I am without flaws. I like people who have moxie. I like people who are assertive. Am I still going to use a lot of "white lies" in my daily life? Yeah, I am. I'm not sure what else to do. Honesty, in a social context, is one of those sticky prisoners' dilemmas: honesty past a certain point only works if everybody is using it, but people won't start being more honest by themselves. Who has to start?

I've learned an immeasurable amount in my life up to this point, and many of the things I've learned have taken me much longer to learn than most other people. I know sarcasm, snark, and white lies. I can deploy all of these in my interactions on a daily basis. Most people don't know that I used to have no idea how to do any of that. While I'm glad that other people understand me, I'm still puzzled that I need to learn how to hide my feelings to more clearly communicate with the rest of humanity! We are so weird.

Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Other People: It's Complicated

Yesterday, I was irritable while sitting alone on a bench outside my apartment building. I was waiting to meet a friend of mine. People that I didn't know kept walking past me while I was sitting there.

I kept checking the time. I don't like to wait. I can wait in the abstract sense. What I especially dislike is waiting in public. It makes me feel insecure and anxious. I feel defensive. I feel like I have to justify being there, wherever it is I am while I'm waiting for someone or something.

I also dislike the uncertainty of not knowing when whatever I'm waiting for is going to happen, or when the person I'm meeting will arrive. Normally, I don't care so much when something is not in my control. It bothers me when I feel like something is not in my control *and* that I have no other alternative. I don't like to feel boxed in. I also don't like having nothing to do but wait.

I can't even talk to myself while I'm waiting, because people in public think you're weird or not entirely there if you talk to yourself while other people are around. It's how I sort my thoughts. It's just easier for me to think when I can hear my own voice, choosing words to match my feelings. Sometimes, I'm not entirely sure what I'm thinking until I can find words to express myself.

When I'm alone, I don't mind uncertainty as much. Uncertainty bothers me more when it involves other people. If I'm going somewhere by myself, it doesn't matter very much to me whether I am lost for a bit or whether I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm with other people, not knowing where I'm going or what I'm doing make me very nervous. I feel like people are judging me for not having a better idea of what I'm doing.

While I was alone yesterday, I lamented that I let the potential criticisms of other people affect me so easily. I wondered if I worry so much about what people think because I have a high regard for the opinions of other people. If I had a lesser view of humanity, perhaps it would be easier for me to not take the treatment of others so personally.

I'm not a very secure person. I have achieved some meaningful things, but I still have many doubts. There are still areas of my life that plague me with insecurity. My interactions in public with other people are one area of my life that still flusters me from time to time.

Because I feel less insecure when I feel more control over a situation, I often prefer to do things by myself. Spending time around other people can drain me, especially if most of them are strangers and I have to consider the impression I'm making. I have spent much of my life concerned that I'm about to say or do something unbearably embarrassing. My concern about the reactions of other people is an instinct of self-preservation, but now I'm wondering if it's an instinct that preserving me or whittling away my confidence.

Atheist Meditation: Grace Like Rain

I love being outside, and feeling a sudden tinge of excitement as I sniff the air and survey the clouds, and I realize that there will be a rainstorm soon. It's a visceral feeling for me: somehow, the atmosphere has had enough - there's so much tension and pressure, yet everything is quiet - the stillness and its promise of disruption fills me with delight.

When I reflect on this foreboding, I think of my adolescent time at church camp. The rain was never stressful. I can't recall feeling that the storms were an interruption. The rain was a pause. The storm was part of the flow of life at church camp. I loved listening to the rain bounce from the eaves of buildings and cabins.

I was promised, again and again, that I wouldn't remember this. At least, my counselors promised me that my memories were conditional. If I failed to keep thoughts of Jesus, redemption, sin, and divine forgiveness close to my heart -- every other experience that I wanted to keep in my thoughts would lose its meaning and value. Everything would slip away, like pebbles on the trails we walked that had eroded over time.

I have not forgotten. My memory lingers. I still feel warmth and happiness when I contemplate the times I spent at church camp. I no longer pray, but I feel the stillness of a forest and then I remember walking to chapel in reverent silence. I no longer sing hymns, but I feel the joy of companionship when I lose my sense of self and drunkenly sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" with my friends. I no longer believe in eternal life, but I have memories that I will never relinquish while I live.

Most fondly, I remember when everyone was together. I remember our campfire sessions, late at night before each cabin and its group would leave for devotions and then go to sleep. We sang tenderly. We told stories. We laughed, we cried, we shouted, and we danced. I know what it's like when people love one another. I've heard that it's God's grace.

Where is this grace? It is abundant, and it is everywhere, but I can't tell you that it involves a god, a scripture, or a savior. I see it in my Jewish friend who left to teach underprivileged children for two years with Teach for America. I see it in my Muslim friend, one-time leader of the Muslim Students Association, who just left to spend two years in Kenya serving with the Peace Corps. I see it in one of my Christian friends, a former Buddhist who exemplifies conscience and compassion while working tirelessly to oppose suffering in many areas of her life. When I was at church camp, we used to sing a song about a Bible verse, 1 John 4:7-8 -- "beloved, let us love one another..." -- my friends may not have heard it, but they live its message every day.

Growing up in the Christian faith and settling into adulthood as an atheist and humanist, I have learned that love and compassion are values for every creed. I have learned that anywhere there are people who support each other without hesitation, you can find a love worth remembering. I think of the rain again. Often, the rain is so ordinary and common place for those who already witness it, that we cannot know what it's like to live an arid and parched life. We are fortunate. The rain replenishes and nourishes us. The rain surrounds us, yet it does not belong to any of us. There are so many who don't have it, or don't have enough of it. We don't need to quarrel about who really has the rain, we just need to ensure that we all have some of it. This rain, and this grace, is worth the effort to remember -- and no one can remove those memories from us, or prevent us from bringing their spirit into our lives again.

Everything Is Unfair

Here's a series of lovely thoughts: Life is never fair, and no one ever plays fair. If the appearance of fairness exists, it is either a temporary equilibrium or it has been imposed by force.

The best way to achieve a semblance of fairness is through empowerment. Expect the process to be slow, painful, and difficult. No one will listen because no one has to listen. You will repeat yourself - constantly. Other people will deliberately misinterpret, distort, and misunderstand your words.

Human beings spend a significant amount of their lives acting irrationally. You can try to convince other people to change their minds, but this will probably not happen until:
1. People are convinced by arguments (you thought this was the only step, didn't you? oh, no!)
2. From their perspective, there are more benefits to changing their mind than not changing their mind
3. They consciously decide to change their own mind and take ownership of that change

There is no guarantee that any notion of progress is inevitable. Things can always get worse. Society does not necessarily improve in every generation - but each new generation has an opportunity to improve on the previous one. That is the only advantage on the side of progress: death.

A generation can be as short-sighted as it can be, and another generation will still take its place. Death is a guarantee. What isn't a guarantee is that there will be another generation, or that younger generations won't inherit the stigmas of their elders.

If you really want people to follow, you must make it easier for people to join you instead of being passive and doing nothing. Defaults are powerful weapons: change expectations, and you will change behavior. Very few systems that are entirely voluntary make a real difference. (Sorry libertarians, you need to wake up and smell the civilization.)

Any successful political movement needs to remember the three steps of persuasion that I've outlined here. Additionally, the first step I listed is not necessarily the first step. Often, it will be more useful to start with the second step, and then the ground is prepared for your audience to tread the other steps in your path to persuasion.

Sometimes it sucks to be a liberal. Change is hard, and annoying. <-- Is this true, though? Is that thought worth thinking? Conservatives know quite a bit about change. Liberals can learn from their example. You don't take a country from FDR and LBJ to Reagan and George W. Bush without change.

There are some specific, extremely useful things you should have to change expectations and shift the default consensus to your views. You'll need: 1) money 2) journalists/other popularizers 3) ideologues/strategists 4) politicians 5) organizations [not listed in order of importance]

The "Occupy" movement disappointed me greatly. Protest without context is an empty, meaningless, futile exercise. You need organizations. You need spokespeople. You need message discipline. The bottom-up structure is a good way to attract anarchists and Ron Paul supporters, and it's a fantastic way to ensure that everyone else in America is ignoring you. Do you want change, or do you want martyrdom?

"Occupy" gave America a blank canvas. When only liberals talked about "Occupy", that was fine. When conservatives also talked about "Occupy", that decision became a disaster. When you have no clear, concise identity and agenda, people can attack you without end and those attacks will stick. You have to own your messaging. "Occupy" didn't.

People aren't going to listen to you because you're in the streets. People will listen to you if you're in the streets and you have a clear, simple, powerful narrative that is frequently repeated and echoed by credible authorities that your audience trusts. Being right isn't enough. Is that fair? No, no, it's not: but nothing in life is fair, and if you want people to change their minds, then you need to be smarter, more efficient, and more organized than the people who have an interest in silencing you. Let's go do that.

Frustrations Of an Old Soul: The Internet

I'm a product of the Internet Age, yet I am still not used to living in an Internet-centric world, one which provides me a constant stream of information. I haven't fully accepted the immensity of knowledge I can access on my own, nor have I realized the implications of my access to such staggering data.

Numerous times in the past few weeks, I have asked some of my friends to send me advice, only to find my efforts redirected to Google or other corners of the Internet. This derailing upsets me. Yes, I am fully aware that I can find the information I want on my own. Is it unacceptable that I still consider human input more valuable? 

Maybe I'm upset because it's how I was raised. My father is a reference librarian. He's a member of a seemingly antiquated profession, one which still holds that actual human beings can help one another in their quest to more effectively find information. 

The Internet is so vast and impersonal. Is it wrong that I trust my friends to help me discover answers that are more meaningful and more personally relevant? Further, I'm annoyed that the social default among my friends is to trust the Internet for all queries. Even if using the Internet is more efficient, does relying so much on technology degrade friendships and relationships with contemporaries? I have believed in the past that the Internet has potential to bring people together - are we instead increasing the isolation between us?

*****

For my second Internet-related complaint of the day, I'd like to disembowel (or, more helpfully, disemvowel) one of the most particularly aggravating instances of Internet-speak. 

I keep hearing the phrase "I'm jelly" or "Are you mad jelly?". People say "jelly" instead of "jealous". As a writer, a poet, and a lover of words -- I am greatly offended by the vulgarity and inelegance of this usage. Consider the sound of "jelly" and its connotations:

1) It sounds weak, lame, juvenile, petty

2) It makes me think of actual jelly (as in, what goes well with peanut butter): soggy, sticky, gloppy -- saying "jealous" this way takes all the power out of the word - consider again:

JEALOUS

ZEALOUS

RIGHTEOUS

^These are all undeniably powerful, awe-some (in the original sense) words. "Jelly" renders "jealous" as a shell of its former self, and mashes a thumping, spirited, aggressive word down to a mushy pulp that's barely recognizable and hardly worth the same meaning. 

What would it sound like if we used the same pattern for zealous and righteous that Internet dwellers favor for jealous?

Imagine reading about the apostle of Jesus, Simon the Zelly. Imagine Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction" -- remember that badass speech he gives before he shoots someone? Try to imagine Samuel L. Jackson furiously, feverishly intoning the "righty" wrath of his god. Doesn't sound so fearsome, does it? 

The sound and meaning of words are important. Now, I'm acutely aware that language and its usage evolves over time. I'm mocked Samuel Johnson for decrying the use of "chicken" as a singular noun in the English language. In this instance, though, when we consider the advantages and disadvantages of using "jelly" or "jealous", I hope I've convinced you that "jealous" is the clearly superior option.

Reflections From Leaving College

I became an entirely different person during college. I lost faith in the religion of my childhood (and became an atheist). I acted in a theater group for the first time. I started performing improv comedy. I started drinking (shortly after the theater and improv). I had (and ended) my first relationship (also after the theater and improv).

I thought honestly about my history with Asperger's Syndrome, and I met other people who shared some of the same stories. I had no close friends my entire freshmen year of college. During my sophomore year, I began to have more friends, but doubts and insecurities about the reliability of my friends plagued me constantly (shortly after the theater and improv). In that same year, I failed my first (and so far only) class (shortly after the theater and improv).

The summer after my sophomore year, I started seeing a therapist and continued doing so until the end of my junior year. Most of the times I went, I felt miserable while I was with a therapist. I didn't know what I should say. It was extremely difficult for me to express my feelings to a stranger...or even to myself. This chance to sort my emotions still helped me immensely, and the lingering impressions of this experience continue to benefit me. It's a strange wonder that I was able to journey through my senior year without any therapy and without paralyzing myself emotionally.

Senior year was rough, but mostly I dealt with my problems better than I had when I was a sophomore. First semester, I was insanely busy. I was struggling with keeping my internship, my classes, and my relationship functioning. I partly succeeded, then I spent the second semester of my senior year trying to save the things I still had left after my first semester. [That was supposed to be funny.]

One of the best and worst moments during college came for me near the very end of my sophomore year. I was at a Cinco de Mayo party with some kids from my theater/improv group, and two of my friends were talking with me - while they were quite buzzed. They told me that they were quite impressed by my ability to do improv, especially since one of them knew me as a freshman when we lived on the same floor of our dorm. She noted that I seemed very shy and not the kind of person who would thrive in improv, but she added that she was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my participation.

I was extremely happy to hear that praise: at that moment, I was very depressed because I had quite recently realized that I was, in fact, about to fail an important class - that I had yet to inform my parents - and that I was moving out and going back home the next morning. It was a dark moment for me, and it was the precise time when I needed to hear some reassuring and uplifting comments. That's one aspect of my life during the past four years for which I am especially thankful: that every time I've felt most alone, least capable of handling my problems, or most lost and vulnerable -- that I've still found some consolation to ease my way through the anguish, and somehow become a stronger, more resilient person.