The Myth of Everyone Else

I was on a plane landing in New York City yesterday as I looked down all the hustle and bustle of the frantic pace that NYC runs at. I smiled as I thought about the life everyone was living, and how they had it all so perfect. "Perfect?" I questioned my internal talk and wondered why I jumped to that conclusion. It's amazing how a simple question of one's thoughts can lead to a deep, multifaceted understanding.

As the plane softly touched down, I wondered about how I view others and how I always jump to the conclusion that they have it all figured out. In my mind, everyone out there in the world knows exactly who they are, what they want, and never doubt the path they're on. It's one thing to question one's self on their potential lack of normality, but it's a completely different animal on seeing everyone else having it all outside of simply talking about a social aspect such as making friends.

What could lead to such a belief? How could I have this belief and never have realized it? Naturally, if one has this belief, they are always going to feel as if they are playing the game of life on the backfoot. If one is living in a world where everyone else has this magical life GPS that always keeps them on a heading, and a person doesn't have it, they are always going to feel as if they are lost amongst the throngs of those that move in direction with purpose.

As I continued to question my beliefs, I thought back in time to school and that this myth of everyone else knowing the directions on the roadmap of life was intact back then. I could describe it as everyone knowing the steps to a dance, or perhaps everyone was in on the inside joke in a language I could never understand. Would that environment lend itself to this belief? No one told me or described to me that each person is on their own journey. Each person is radically unique to his or herself. Of course, why would someone describe this to a second grader when this knowledge should come naturally to those who qualify for the myth of a diagnosis called normal, but for someone like myself on the autism spectrum, it didn't come naturally. 

In Finding Kansas, I wrote a chapter called "I vs. It" in which I described my perception that everyone else is this one entity. My thoughts yesterday made this clearer, my clarity on understanding this, and how I've always felt as if I'm playing the race of life starting the race two laps down. Even now, writing this and identifying this, I can't simply make individuals of everyone else. My brain defaults to the myth that everyone else has clear directions, knows what they want to be when they grow up, and has nary a problem because they are part of a collective that I am not a part of. 

I'm not sure if this was beat into my brain by making social error after social error, or perhaps this is a learned trait by being a different type of operating system to everyone else if the brain were a computer. Whatever the case may be, the obvious downside to this is a sensation that I'm lost even when I have direction. Those around me, right now as I write, may have direction, or may not. They may be wandering to their next thing, or wandering willfully wherever they may land. I'll forget this in mere minutes, but I understand that no one truly knows who they are and where they are going at all moments of life. I'm not unique in this feeling. We are all trying our best and deciphering the mysteries of our lives, and perhaps we will be trying to figure out why we are really here until our final breath. Yes, this is what being human is, there is no magical GPS, there is no cheat sheet or roadmap, and this myth I've lived with for so long as made me live life on the backfoot, but at least for the next few moments I'll understand that this isn't the way.