Autism and helping the world.

Lately I have been thinking about autism and what power it has over the mind when dealing with seemingly simple tasks such as asking for a glass of water.

People with autism suffer from a defect of the mind where they cannot perceive other humans or animals alike as real, living, breathing people and pets. They view us as just other objects in this world that do unexpected things and make unexpected noises that they cannot calculate.

The physiologist Alison Gopnik explains what it would be like to have autism.

“This is what it is like to sit around a dinner table. At the top of my field of vision is a blurry edge of my nose, in front are waving hands…. Around me bags of skin are draped over chairs and stuffed into pieces of cloth, they shift and protrude in unexpected ways…. two dark spots at the top of them swivel relentlessly back and forth. A hole beneath that spot fills with food and from it comes a scream of noises. Imagine that the noisy skin-bags suddenly moved towards you and their noises grew loud, and you have no idea why, no way of explaining them or predicting what they would do next.”

To me this explanation is a very frightening idea. Now I could not imagine being in a world that I could not understand yet when I was younger I experienced this phenomenon. Luckily for me it wasn’t that severe and I eventually understood what was happening and why.

It was also said by a psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen that to be male is to have a minor form of autism. On an average most autism patients are male. A good example of this the similarities that an autism patient shares with a very nerdy male. That social awkwardness, the inability to interact properly, nervous little moves. It all ties in.

This could somewhat explain a lot of time in my life where I have felt this, especially after my accident. I could not quite understand people or what was going on. Fortunately for me I was able to break it down and rediscover what was happening around me. For a long time I can remember that I treated people as thought they were just other things that I interacted with in the world.

One day I was walking with my friend discussing life and the issues a teenage boy goes through. I remember very vividly say “Man, what really gets me is how when you look at someone in their eyes, they are thinking and living just like I am, that’s another person who thinks in their.”

At the time it was very scary for me to think this and it really opened my eyes to what was going on around me in the world. This wasn’t just some sort of computer game where I live out my life ‘levelling’ up, becoming successful or what ever. This was real human/soul interaction (at the time I don’t think I perceived the soul yet) between all 6 billion or so of us.

My cousin had a baby boy a few years ago now and recently my family found out he has autism. In my mind I feel that if I could just be there when he goes through his upper adolescence that I could have a dramatic influence in the way he turns out. If I could somehow become his close friend I could help him unravel the world and give him a chance of understanding what the world is.

The only problem is that I am not going to be able to be there for him as he grows up. I’m not his school chum, nor do I regularly see his family. I don’t even live in the same city as them anymore. Which makes me sad and really yearn to see him grow up into a defining man.

If there are any guys (or girls) out there who have trouble with social interaction or with some of the things I’ve talked about in this post I want to let you know that there are places out there that cater for individuals that struggle in this area. They are actually more common than you would expect and you probably have heard of them and/or been to such an event when you were younger and didn’t realise what it was.

Outward Bound courses that take you out into the wild and make you fend for yourself are a big one amongst the guys. We need to discover what we are and what we need to feel adequate with ourselves.

There are professionals who specialize in personal development and coaching with life goals out there that have a strong desire for you to succeed. Recently I have had the urge to see if I could get into this industry and become a personal coach. It would be such a satisfactory thing for me to know that I am helping other guys out there become what they see themselves as when they are under there blankets at night. That the world isn’t really a big scary place once you understand it and that what they really dream about is (within the planes of reality) definitely within their reach.

I had friends in Australia who specialized in this job and helped me to reach the goals I had set and become the person who I am now.  I meet people these days and really feel as though I could help them in areas, which they may be lacking.  As I improved my mind I see in others the way they can improve themselves.

I feel a strong change in my life this year as I change my outlook on life and start to really reach out and help people. I have learnt so much and taken in so much from people over the past 5 years, now I feel as though I should give something back.

Hopefully this site can be the first set in that right direction. Over the next 12 months I shall be sharing with the adoring Internet public what I have learnt and hope to answer questions relating to the things I do best.

So if you have anything you would like me to try and tackle send me a little comment under this or contact me on matthavok@gmail.com.

Peace and much love, Havok.

Tags: autism, discovery, helping the world, Life, matthavok, mind, Mind wax, personal freedom, you mind, your mind