The Concept of Time

We all have moments of what feels like a loss of time. Where did the time go? Wow! That only took 1 hour? Felt more like 4 hours. You know what I mean. And over a long period, say 10-20 years, it's even weirder. Sometimes I still feel like I'm in college and it's been 25 years.

Well Matthew doesn't seem to get it at all. The concept of time passing is so foreign that he often, just stares blankly at me when I talk about it. He's learning about calendars at school; and marking the days as they pass. It's like a game to him. This morning he showed me what day it was on the calendar and then began to say the days of the week and their numbers to the end of the month. He declared that it was Thursday July 30th 2009 and wouldn't hear otherwise. When I tried to explain that it was really Tuesday the 7th he had a mini nutty. I'm sure he's thinking, "If I want it to be the 30th, why can't it be so." So, I pretend that's it's whatever day he says. Since he doesn't get the time thing, why try to explain how wrong he is.

This brings me to an interesting point. What most of these kids lack is a sense of being human, of earthliness, to coin a word. It seems to me most of these PDD-NOS kids got dropped down on Earth from somewhere else, figuratively, of course. They don't get time, social cuing, language, cultural/socially correct behavior, communication is brutal for them. Everything that comes more or less naturally to everyone else is profoundly difficult for them.

The three things my son understands without any explaining are love, music and laughter. Everything else is somewhat or completely strange to him. It's all work for him. Love, music and laughter come easily. I'm not lost on the universally, spiritualness of these three gifts. I like to pretend, if you will, that Matthew is a gift. A gift to help me/us understand how important love, laughter and even music are to the world. And how unimportant, looks, money, things and stuff, ego, gender, being right or better than someone else, or being on time, really are. Because, when this life is over none of that will have mattered at all.

If we could stop trying to make them more like us and learn to be a little more like them, we might actually be doing the world a better service. I'm not lost on the need for these kids to be able to get by in a world that's foreign to them. Life skills are a vital part of being human. Learning self care, basic math, how to read and at least minimally functioning in society are skills that need to be worked on.

Here's an idea that isn't novel. It's been brought up by people with autism before. Suppose we look at it not like a disease that needs to be stamped out, like cancer or diabetes, but, rather a gift that comes with a price. Most profound gifts come with a price. These folks are here for a reason. Lots of them too. It's not the vaccines, the food they eat, bad parenting. It's not any of the screwy things we'd like to believe. I'm going out on a limb here. I know I'm going to offend a few people and what they'd like to think are their sensibilities. But, what if autistic people were here to help us raise our collective vibrations. What if they came as a gift to humanity, to teach us about what's really important about being human.

What if...