The discovery of my neurodivergence has been a blessing in disguise, for, together with other crises, it forced me to examine my life.
https://www.yourautisticlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/mohamed-nohassi-odxB5oIG_iA-unsplash-1024x683.jpgPhoto by Mohamed Nohassi on UnsplashI know for a fact that some people won’t accept that neurodivergence is a blessing at all. These folks sometimes wish that they would be able to do away with their own neurodivergence, and be neurotypical, because it would make things easier. They are most likely correct. Some things would be easier. It is easier to live your life if you do not spend most of it strategizing to avoid shutdowns, meltdowns, and burnouts. This much is true.
Truth be told, sometimes, too, I have fleeting thoughts about how easier my own life would be if I weren’t neurodivergent. I wouldn’t have to wear noise-cancelling headphones, and look out of place, when I go to those events where they blast music. I wouldn’t have to deal with social anxiety, insomnia, reflux, shutdowns, etc. The list goes on and on.
However, I am quite certain that, without me being autistic, my own life wouldn’t be better, overall. It would, in fact, be a much poorer life. I bet the same is true for other people, though I cannot be absolutely certain of this. Perhaps the realization that neurodivergence is a blessing requires the perspective of age. I discovered my own neurodivergence at 50. Therefore, I never had to think about it as a young person.
At any rate, neurodivergence, for all its ills, provided me a great boon: it forced me to examine my own life. Socrates said it best:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
According to Plato, these words were uttered by Socrates at his trial, when he chose death over exile. The authorities had accused him of corrupting Athens’ youth. Yep, the “for the children” moral panic goes at least as far back as the time of Socrates. There is also a flip side to this saying. It is this:
“The examined life is worth living.”
Perhaps a better wording for both sayings would be that the unexamined life is a wasted life, and thus, the examined life, is a fruitful, not wasted life. There is a danger here. It is to think that what I’m arguing for is that those who cannot examine their own lives should be treated with less respect than those who can. This is not what I am arguing. Treat everyone with respect, and try to create the conditions through which everyone who wishes to do so can examine their own lives.
Now, if there is one thing at which capitalism excels, it is at pushing the citizens who happen to live under its edicts to live an unexamined life. In order to be a good capitalist citizen, all other considerations have to be subjugated to the pursuit of capital.
This is perhaps the most evident for those people who have a hard time making ends meet. They must work long hours, and maybe multiple jobs, in order to survive. In this survival mode, there is precious little time to examine their own lives. When you come back from work dead tired, you do not have the inclination to spend time reflecting upon your own life. You go to bed, and the cycle restarts the next day.
This may be less evident, but this pursuit of capital also impedes the ability of the ruling class to examine their own lives. In the capitalistic mind, it is not possible to own enough. One has to continue working to amass more and more property ad nauseam. The rat race never ends, and the rat race leaves no time to examine one’s life.
There is one type of event that is likely to cause us to examine our life: a life crisis. These crises can take many forms. In my own life, I’ve gone through multiple crises: a heart attack at the age of 24, a cancer at the age of 48 (and the disability it entailed), a divorce at the age of 50, the discovery of my own neurodivergence at the age of 50, and there may be other crises that don’t look like crises to me right now but are crises nonetheless.
I expect that a crisis which is apt at causing us to examine our lives has to have certain characteristics. I haven’t cataloged those characteristics yet, but I still can venture some informed guesses. The crises that would prompt self-examination have to be forceful while at the same time not being crushing. My cancer almost killed me. If I had died, it wouldn’t have spurred any examination of my life. At the same time, it wasn’t a walk in the park.
Furthermore, these crises cannot be perpetual. The person who needs to work two jobs to make ends meet lives in a perpetual crisis, a crisis that leaves no time for reflection. True, the fact that I’m neurodivergent is perpetual, but it is the initial discovery that is the crisis. I’ve learned how to deal with my autism. I still continue to learn, but my learning is not as intense as it initially was.
You may be surprised to see in my list the discovery of one’s own neurodivergence as a crisis. I do think, no matter how it happens, that dealing with one’s own neurodivergence is a crisis, and one that especially lends itself to favoring living an examined life. From what I gather through talking with other neurodivergent folks, the discovery of our own neurodivergence causes us to examine very carefully, at the very least, which activities we can take on, and which we should avoid. I know I did this.
It is perhaps ironic that, in the case of neurodivergence, this self-examination is spurred by the very capitalist society in which we live. This is because its edicts are so often at odds with our own needs for self-care. What society considers to be acceptable behavior and acceptable demands is so often to us, neurodivergent people, unacceptable.
Now, I’m not saying that all neurodivergent people are experts at examining their own life. However, this examination is so crucial for providing for our own care, that most of us are forced to perform it. Thus it is that we avoid living the unexamined life, and that our lives become in fact fruitful.
Your own life is fruitful, when you examine it. May your own neurodivergence spur you to examine it. May we also work to push past capitalism so that all of us who wish to do so can engage in examining our own lives, for they become richer from it.