Typically,
after I write a blog about a topic, I’ll feel better about it but all day
yesterday the thoughts about empathy and other emotions made me rather, well,
emotional. Perhaps thinking about this topic brought back thoughts of last
December and all the hideous generalizations made about the autism spectrum.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve experienced both ends of the emotional empathetic
spectrum. Perhaps it’s both.
The title of
this blog post, I think, sums it up best on anything having to do with emotions
as all things are to the power of “E” which stands for extreme. There is no
filter for emotions and whatever is being felt or unfelt is going to be to the
strongest of levels. However, as with anything on the autism spectrum, I
believe, if we study it enough we will have two answers and both can be right.
In fact, in my life, this has held true.
When it
comes to empathy I’ve done both; I’ve been overly and I’ve been cold and cut
off. This story isn’t in my main presentation, but when I present to students I
talk of an incident in 4th grade in which a fellow student, whom was
the best kicker for kickball and I was the self-appointed chief umpire, and I
had an interesting encounter. This kid always played and never missed a day
until this one day. Being routine oriented I sought him out and he was by the
door we were led out to go to recess. I approached him and right as I was about
to ask him a question he looked up and saw me coming and said, “Oh… yeah… um…
My dog died this morning.” If there were ever a time for empathy that would be
the time, right? However, my response was one of, in which I sort of looked
around in an aloof manner, and I said, “Oh… oh… um… Do you want to go play
kickball now?” It wasn’t until three hours later that the emotions of his
statement were processed and registered that I understood that my response was
not exactly the best one.
Then, just
five years ago in 2008, I had another incident of an apparent lack of empathy.
My mom was getting ready to go to this two-day, indoor car race in Fort Wayne,
Indiana held each year between Christmas and New Years and she was in the
process of getting her shoes on when she took a step backwards, tripped over a
ball, fell, and slammed her head on a table. She was knocked out and, as I say
in my presentation, if you could freeze time and go back and be a witness to
this you would probably think I was the most cold, callous, heartless
individual in the whole wide world. What you couldn’t see, however, was what
was going through my mind which was an extreme amount of “What to do’s.” I was
essentially paralyzed by my own internal emotional response which coupled with
my fear of doing the wrong thing that I was relegated into doing nothing.
Again, with
anything, at least with me, whatever is felt is felt to the extreme. If you
give me a scale of 0 to 10 on what I am feeling I will either be at a 0-1 or a
9.5-10. Middle ground doesn’t exist and there was an incident at the SKUSA
Streets of Lancaster race that I showed a high level of concern unlike the
previous two examples.
It was in
our youngest class and I was displaying the halfway sign (a rolled up green and
white flagged in a crossed manned) which at this race, being a street race and
being in a potential impact zone, I rarely looked behind me towards turn one.
During this race, after the top five had passed, I heard this loud thud and I
looked behind me and saw a kart upside down up against the starting lights. I
threw down my flags and radioed into control in a voice of high concern saying,
“Control, serious crash, stand by.” I then ran full speed to get a condition of
the driver and I was so worried that when I got there, as the visible signs of
damage on the kart showed that this was going to be bad, that the driver was
going to be severely injured.
I don’t know
if I’ve ever ran faster in my life and all the while I never looked behind me.
My sole concern was the driver and had another incident happened behind me
sending a kart my way I never would have known. When I got to the incident the
driver was practically swimming out of the hay bales and I knelt down and
gingerly asked, “Are you okay?” I say gingerly but my voice certainly had a
hint of quivering in it as I was sure this was going to be bad as I have never
seen a rear of a kart so badly mangled. The kid’s face shield had been knocked
open in the crash and he looked up at me and said, “Yeah… yeah I’m fine” which
was hard to believe because he had tears coming from his eyes but without my
asking he immediately explained, “but I’m very allergic to hay… Achoo!” I was
speechless as he sneezed a couple more times but I led him to the finish line where
he stayed for the rest of the race and I asked several more times, “Are you
sure you’re okay?” by which at the end of the race I think he was glad to get
away from my repeated questions.
As I fly to
the world’s largest karting event today I’m reminded even more of the emotions
I felt in that incident and it’s a great contrast that in two stories I was the
classic image of the autism spectrum; cold, seemingly heartless and yet in the
last story my level of concern, which I doubt I could ever properly convey, was
about as high as it could be.
After
writing what I’ve got so far this morning I still feel the same as yesterday
and I still don’t know why. I want to say all the right things and explain it
to perfection and I feel I haven’t. I don’t know if there is anything more
important that understanding that, “if you’ve met one person with autism you’ve
only met one” and that the way it plays out in each person can be radically
unique. However, what is within each person, seems to be to the power of E. Middle
grounds, grey areas, and things that aren’t concrete are in scarce rarity. If
something is felt it’s going to be near a level of unfiltered chaos. If
something isn’t felt then it’s going to be to trying to imagine what blue is
like without ever knowing or seeing the color.
Speaking of
the power of E, I’m going to be in my ultimate Kansas for the next five days as
the SKUSA Supernats are about to commence in Las Vegas. This will be my sixth
time as the chief starter of it and while these next five days are the five
most physically and mentally demanding they are my favorite five days of the
year. As with anything, if I enjoy something I don’t just enjoy it but the
feeling of bliss is extreme, but in this case the scale is broken. I look
forward to these days all year long and they are here! I’d like to write more
but my 2nd flight (I wrote this in the air and have posted this from
the Salt Lake City airport) is just about to take off. Again though, I feel
there is so much more here, so much more to say, but right now I don’t know how
to say it.
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