The way it is

You know, there is a serious contradiction between creating transactional models of how other people relate to you and each other, which I'm compelled to do because I lack empathy but have a surfeit of sympathy, and believe you me, that's a combination that is guaranteed to bring you a world of pain, and ultimately just not caring what other people think or do. I am simply not able ever to say "that's how it is". I must always ask "why". That's bad enough generally, but it's even worse when you either don't care about what it is or you want it to be some other way. (I'm suddenly reminded of this video:

 

.)

What I mean is, there is so little value in thinking "why is she like this to me?" when you simply want her to be a different way. Learning why helps you not at all. It's not as though you can comprehend the transaction, change some parameter, and make it what you want. Instead, what you get is frustration, bitter frustration, because you understand but the person you understand not only does not understand but denies your understanding is real.

I am not talking about anything in particular, so the people who read this and think "well, but..." can chill out. It's not about you in particular. The thing is, us autistic boys feel this shit a lot, so it's about you but also about some other person, heaps of people, everybody.

Did you ever think about those scientists who learn about, I don't know, nematodes? And not because they are trying to fill in some bigger picture, just because there are nematodes to learn about. They enumerate nematodes; they find out what there is to know about them, what they do, where they live, how they live.

For no reason but to know.

Well, for me, lots of the world is like that. I know it's pointless but that's not the point. I suppose the world divides somewhat into people who think everything has to have a point and people who don't.

You can be each kind of person on different days.

I cannot describe an anatomy of love. I cannot delve into it, I've tried. I cannot know you, understand you, unravel you. I can enumerate you, like a nematode, but knowing what you do, how you live, where you go, even if I understood what compelled or impelled every piece of that, what would I know?

Nothing. We believe, I believe, in the spirit because we cannot understand the world by knowing its motions. I have examined the person I am, the things I've done, the smallest piece and still, I have not found the answer to even the simplest question. Today. Tomorrow I may know more.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:03 am