Improvising Life Autistic Style

As a newly identified Aspie, I have to admit that my life philosophy has been affected gravely by my recent diagnosis. Although I wasn’t aware of the actual cause of my attitude towards life, I have always been a bit of a maverick, often improvising and using creative ways to deal with problems and get out of difficult situations. I am aware that many of us choose to live their lives in a more ‘special way’ than the average person does. Unorthodox is the word that comes to mind, after often characterised as such by friends, but not inappropriately or entirely wrong if I may add.

The truth of science

The pandemic era has definitely played a role in realising some of my truths, especially through difficult situations that have recently put my limits and strengths to test. These triggered a self exploring journey that intended to answer some of the whys and naturally I turned myself to the only truth there is: science. After having spent many hours studying the mathematical principles of possibilities and the role of chance in our lives intensely over the past few years, I have consciously started building and living my life in a more self- engineered way, ignoring some of the usual norms and social conventions. If you look at the whole picture, none of this matters, and although many of us have said so before, few have actually truly believed that and tried to implement this simple principle to their actual lives.

A very easy way for me to achieve this perspective, especially when I feel lost and drawn by life’s minor and bigger problems, is to have a look or think of the vast universe (a clear night sky often helps) and remind myself of how small, potentially insignificant and so very mortal we are. Then I zoom in on earth and on my present tormenting situation and I eventually manage to see through a fresh and lighter lens. This keeps things in proportion for me and gives me a sense of relief and freedom. I seriously advise that all humans do it occasionally.

Breaking free of social conventions

Being trapped in social conventions and outdated, non-functioning traditions is something humans can easily break the habit of doing, if they just focus on the real and maintain the correct angle to look at things. All we need is to find the will, educate and finally train ourselves. It is easier than we think. We also have to remember to avoid listening to the usual all knowing middle aged males that have been making our lives difficult for a few thousand years now, just to keep us under the illusion that we need them in charge so that they can eventually ‘fuck us’. People don’t need self righteous know-it-alls to shake their index fingers at them and teach them moral lessons from distorted historical, fictional or mythological events. To rephrase what the famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman once wrote, everything makes sense in hindsight and that is why we tend to believe that understanding the past makes us able to predict the future. But the events of the past are not linear and the relationship between cause and effect is often more chaotic than we chose to believe. Not that there is nothing to learn from past experience. On the contrary, I thing we should probably scrutinise past events and try to avoid similar mistakes, but please let’s not pretend that we can foretell what is going to happen next.

Talking of overconfident males pointing their fingers, I cannot help but think of many of my white male surgical colleagues, whose status and validity is almost never doubted as long as they keep appearing and sounding as pompous and know-it-alls as they always do. Countless of them have given me so far tons of advice on how to live my life and how to plan my career/what career to follow. I am sure this looks like a familiar experience to most of us females. I have been a medical doctor for 17 years now but it never crossed my mind to tell a junior colleague what to do with their lives. Besides being annoying, overconfidence can also be dangerous since believing that you are right or an expert doesn’t necessarily make you one. That is quite an alarming fact, considering that overconfidence is pretty much endemic in our professional field, leading to potentially wrong decisions for patients. Unfortunately it is still a long way to change the way people perceive doctors and the way doctors perceive reality as a result.

The beauty of the truth is often overlooked

But to get back to the actual point of this article, chance is a puzzling and disturbing factor in our other than that (what we think are) well planned lives. What if we try to accept and use this disturbing but also rejuvenating revelation to make our lives better? It could take the pressure off many things and help us re-evaluate life situation by putting them in the right proportion. To spice this idea up even more, I am going to suggest to combine that concept with the genuine curiosity that children and often autistic people have for this world and the truth. There is beauty and simplicity in knowledge and truth that most people don’t appreciate or care about simply because they haven’t learned to do so from a young age. The reason they haven’t learn is that they didn’t have to because of the wider believe that social conventions and ‘being nice’ is more important than truth and knowing yourself. And also because of maths, dah…

A few days ago I was scrubbed in theatre performing a laparotomy which was going really smoothly and therefore allowed some chit chat on the table. Since I am definitely not one for the weather conversation, the discussion was mainly between my assistant and the theatre nurse while listening to the mandatory for every December Mariah Carey Christmas song. The discussion was about how much they liked Christmas songs and which one of them is the best. While I continued to operate and keep my thoughts of how boring this conversation was to myself, the anaesthetist came behind me and jumped in the conversation: ‘I hate Christmas songs!’, she said in the most disgusted tone. The comment was so spontaneous that it took me by surprise and I started laughing. Unfortunately I was the only one. My two colleagues remained silent until she left the room. Immediately after that followed a conversation between them pointing out how inappropriate and inhuman is to say something like that. I couldn’t believed they took it so seriously. ‘What kind of person doesn’t like Christmas songs?’ they both cried. ‘A normal one’, I thought and said nothing of course. It is hard not to play the game if you want to be part of the team. But how is that better than masking? Now I feel I should have said something. Why can’t we just accept a person’s truth without looking at it through the social norm lens and criticising it? How can we be that confident that the right thing to do is to ostracise a person that doesn’t 100% comply with what we believe humans should behave like? This is such a small and trivial incident, however there is no doubt that such interactions often lead people and especially neurodivergents to social isolation at work and outside it.

My idea of improving the world is teaching children the beauty of the truth by initiating them to sciences and arts early and by encouraging them to be genuine and curious about the world and themselves. Being polite is good and very necessary, but still different than being nice. To paraphrase writer Joanne Limburg, to be kind doesn’t necessary mean to be nice. Kind can be rough and unpleasant at times. But we can try to be kind nevertheless and live a meaningful life in its most honest and therefore purest form.