There’s an old saying called “Be careful what you wish for… you just might get it.” and I must say it’s true, specifically in successful neurodivergent masking escapades.
I remember growing up feeling like the one disconnected, never sure how the constant interchange of drama and ideas unfolded so naturally.. and yet they did; constantly with neurotypical people!
People didn’t censor themselves nor screen themselves and at times may have even been vulgar and all was fine but if I screened myself into a frenzy I still came up short almost as if I had shown up to English class with math notes.
I longed for the acceptance of the in crowd and yet I saw the vanity and lack of depth present in many common interchanges..as well as the points of hidden depth in everyday people’s intercommunication, usually unseen by the in crowd themselves.
In a way this always made me a peace maker of sorts because I came to the protection of what people took for granted and I saw hidden beauty where others saw nothing.
Details oriented, often missing the forest for the forgotten tree shrub and yet I was well aware that that tree shrub is what forests were made of.
I knew it.. because I was that tree shrub..forgotten in the forest.
I remember sometime into my early twenties through various meditative techniques, cognitive behavioral changes and techniques as well as having been brought into a more healthy close friend community that I was somewhat learning how to operate in community even if it was community as married to my ‘monastic’ musings of the same. (Monasticism was the ideological template that helped open me up to a larger community of people. For better clarity my friends ran a community coffee shop and I lived with them for a while. I experienced genuinely what I would call ‘divine love’ in that family and the community that surrounded them )
Always seeing in the thing the thing the others didn’t see. Seeing the Transcendent value in the common place. Seeing the monastery in the community coffee shop or in the “home for wayward boys.”
I knew it.. because I was that tree shrub..forgotten in the forest.
I really was a lost boy and I revisit that often.
Ironically I could even say that the Messiah figure in my life has often returned me to Peter Pan like musings.
Surely it makes sense because the mature man will need to be willing to sacrifice egoistic preference for the greatest good and yet Pan becomes a crony corporate business man when he forgets his soul. The childlike imaginative in us all that becomes the healer of the aching body of the mind that forgot, it’s soaring soul!
Like the old gospel song said “I’ll fly away oh glory I’ll fly away!” sometimes returning to the simple childlikeness that eschews egotism without making a spiritual or virtuous activity out of it is that noble task rarely taken. The Pan man never lost his ability to fly because he maintained those ‘happy thoughts’.
How this relates to my life is sometimes I have felt genuine and I have felt the pressure to “get to work” as it were and to attempt to forget my happy thoughts, that place of no neurodiveregent masking in preference for neurotypical poker face.
Noone can easily describe or know how hard this experience can be. Much like having the FCC in your head at all time censoring everything your’e ready to say or do and having to change course and rechannel your energy typicalizing the neuro non typical many times feels like an oppressive act of internal self violence and yet this world is very violent.
I like to see how some of the biblical prophets only found divinity when they went “outside of the camp/ city gates” and this is how I have felt this past year and a quarter+ whilst I’ve shunned societal going ons, retreated ever inward and thought about how I might change society in the only way possible by helping it embrace its highest self by practicing what I wish to preach. The truth of the matter is that noone who changes and “becomes new” has become something novel but rather something ancient. “The good man brings forth treasures old and new.” and I guess I’m an old soul.
(A little poem comment I wrote for y’all antimaskers. )
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the fear of the Lord isn’t an end in itself. Is it fear to avoid hell which is worthy to fear and then say to the sick..go now physician and heal thyself?
Jesus said preach and heal is thy task. Where many words are -sin will not be lacking..so why oh erudite soul wont you please wear a mask?
If the Lord is to fear and the punishments of hell and to heal and to preach is thy mission pray tell..can you not also protect another’s mortal shell?
You know it is written as has been duly known by the beautiful Jewish messiah bethroned that what’s done to the least of these is done to His own.
Therefore if you quibble at a small ethical task …can your master charge you in the big if you can’t wear a mask?
Wear a mask ,wear a mask is all that they ask during pandemic plagues do the wise “cancel’ that?
Elephants work for peanuts and GOPple them fast..if it could save some one you know WHO’d appreciate that…
Most kindly then till the coast clears .. for the least of these “that” will you do them a favor.. wont you please wear a mask?!
This message is approved by James Dillon Broxson. Thank you Kay Ivey for extending the mask mandate and listening to our public health officials. It means the world to us that you are trying your best to put people before politics on this issue. A good and ethical bipartisan and science following move. Legacy comes from doing the right thing over merely following a brand. We appreciate it.
UPDATE { I SPOKE TO FAST… SHE CHANGED THE MASK ORDER TO A CHOICE THING. GOOD GRIEF!!!}
P.S. I’m glad she did the right thing for a while but I guess politicking is an endless pressure. “Shaking my head. “
I don’t know about you but do you ever have a moment where you experience your individual nature in such a way where you are shocked by how much life shapes you and how much society becomes a stage?
If so there is however an irony because with great autonomy comes great responsibility. Great autonomy is great power and this is why poor community college philosophy teachers are often actually happy.. and even some theologians. Existential autonomy is the power to know one is a weak cog in a wheel and not to fear it. This seems like a ‘privilege’ and in some ways is but in other ways it can be a cross or even a burden. The channeling agencies of the gifted gecko or chameleon are succinct even if he adorns a wall like a flower. He sees more than others from the wall and gathers colors, even while quiet, he hears things. Pay attention to the geckos and it will pay off. They will show you your true colors. The transaction is called Gecko-nomics.
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Musings of a Picture Frame Conversationalist. 