I have a fresh example of how wrong motives lead to wrong conclusions. By wrong, I mean incorrect assumptions as opposed to wrong meaning bad. For example, you can have the wrong time, but you can’t have the bad time. When you’re having a bad time, that doesn’t mean time itself is bad. A bad time means your experience during that time felt bad. Someone else could be having a good time while you’re having a bad one.
Last night, my husband’s friend came to visit again. This guy is not my enemy, but it’s also obvious he wouldn’t enjoy regular visits to chit-chat with me if my husband did not exist. Anyhow, our visitor does like to engage in conversation with me on occasion. I guess the reason conversations can often times be less enjoyable between me and this guest is because of the work involved in our communicating. The body language aspect in this example is irrelevant. You’ll soon understand why (I hope).
I have always had an insatiable curiosity to know what other people think. This passion increases when it comes to information about what other people think about me. Immediately, my motive for this is misjudged because practically nobody wants to learn what others think about them for the same reason I do.¹ There I went, getting sucked inside another vortex of frustration when trying to explain myself. This guy will eventually ‘get it’ because he finally knows me well enough for me to bring up his correct conclusions about me that he already has, in order to weave them into this wrong one so it can be eliminated. Then, he will be able to see how he made another mistake in spite of his being highly intelligent. What the guest needs is to be ‘properly’ educated. Why? Because when two radically different minds (that do NOT process information in the same manner) get together to have a conversation (i.e., a neurotypical and an aspie), it is inevitable that misjudgments are going to endlessly abound.
Last night, I was constantly being advised to stop worrying about what other people think about me. No matter how many times I told him I am not worried about it, he kept insisting that I was. He believed he was right because he was looking at me through his neurotypical colored agnostic glasses. I need to know what other people think about me sometimes, because I need to know how they think. People should also know how I think, because we all have to share this same planet. I do not claim to be ‘better’ than others, but I (along with a substantial amount of other sane people) do also know that others have NO right to automatically claim their mental health is ’better’ than mine (no matter how much they might like to convince themselves so). Most folks already know how typical people think because they already think alike. Since my brain has its own invisible path to answers that is very different from the way other minds operate, people cannot judge me correctly. They think they are because they’re so used to the way ‘normal’ people think. ‘Normal’ people don’t realize how spoiled they are by how much easier it is for them to communicate among their own kind. They also have no clue how much effort I have to put forth when working at communicating a message to someone so he is able to understand me correctly.²
I have an analogy that hopefully helps others to understand why I don’t worry over what others think about me. God being God in my life is the biggest reason. I do have another reason and it is fairly simple.
Now that I’ve learned how impossible it is for me (generally speaking) to get others acquainted with me to form the kind of friendship that most people are sometimes blessed with, I quit trying to make it happen. For me, it’s either going to happen or it’s not. Having said that, I’m sure many would argue with me on this since they can’t imagine what it is like to be me.
I’ll use sexual behavior as an analogy. Try real hard to envision a man who has NO sex drive but yet would want to get pregnant and carry this baby inside his body. In this odd analogy, there is still a need to copulate with the opposite sex in order to beget a child. Since this man knows only women are able to bear children, and his only reason he would want to engage in sex with a woman would be for him to be the one to bear a child (rather than the woman), he would not bother with trying to do something impossible. If, by chance, science came up with a way for doctors to help this guy achieve his desire to experience pregnancy first hand, then maybe he would pursue women sexually to attain this. In my case, for me to make a friend, God has to be my surgeon to work upon the mind of whoever might be my potential friend. By myself, I cannot do it. My husband, my daughter, and my son, would vouch to that.
In this scenario regarding my social unpopularity, there is no reason for me to worry about what others think of me. It might be what most neurotypicals do, since their minds function enough alike to make it natural for them to develop friendships when they put forth the effort. When you have a brain AND a spirit that both contain a nature too weird for others to comprehend, trust me→ making friends cannot happen by willful effort no matter how hard one tries. By trying, I don’t mean sacrificing who you are and the way you think to accommodate the other person’s comfort zone.
True friendship requires both parties to meet halfway, but unless they share the same spirit (resulting from common ground faith), having the same neurological structure doesn’t go very far. Even with the same spirit, if the neuro-cultures are not alike, the friendship is limited in growth when compared to those sharing identical neuro-culture relationships.
¹It might be possible that there are some other aspies who have the same motive as me, but since I’ve even had to explain this to an aspie friend of mine, that tells me EVERYONE should be cautious about making assumptions!
²My husband and my daughter are finally just beginning to grasp and appreciate my efforts. They both admit they’ve never known anyone to be so much work to understand as I am. Sadly, my parents, half-sisters, cousins, and all other relatives outside of my immediate household, never really knew me well enough to want to get to know me. I don’t blame anyone. God predestined them to no longer be a part of my life, so that He could form me into who I am now. Today, I can appreciate everything in life—even those things that once upon a time hurt deeply.
