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December 25 - December 26, 2023
When I’m talking in a weird voice, I’m not doing it on purpose.
there are some times when I find the sound of my own voice comforting, when I’ll use familiar words or easy-to-say phrases.
I do understand things, but my way of remembering them works differently from everyone else’s. I imagine a normal person’s memory is arranged continuously, like a line. My memory, however, is more like a pool of dots.
True compassion is about not bruising the other person’s self-respect.
we don’t look at people’s eyes very much.
A person who’s looking at a mountain far away doesn’t notice the prettiness of a dandelion in front of them.
person who’s looking at a dandelion in front of them doesn’t see the beauty of a mountain far away.
cupping our ears is a measure we take to protect ourselves and get back our grip on where we are.
the despair we’re feeling has nowhere to go and fills up our entire bodies, making our senses more and more confused.
the memory of a person with autism isn’t like a number-scale from which you pick out the recollection you’re after: it’s more like a jigsaw puzzle, where if even just one piece is misinserted, the entire puzzle becomes impossible to complete.
meals aren’t just about nutrition—meals are also about finding joy in life. Eating is living,
people with autism who prefer to wear the same clothes day in, day out. Clothes are like an extension of our bodies, an outer skin, and so the day-in, day-outers find it reassuring to stick to the same outfit.
Q34Do you have a sense of time? Time is a continuous thing with no clear boundaries, which is why it’s so confusing for people with autism.
Just watching spinning things fills us with a sort of everlasting bliss—for the time we sit watching them, they rotate with perfect regularity. Whatever object we spin, this is always true. Unchanging things are comforting, and there’s something beautiful about that.
Q37Why do you flap your fingers and hands in front of your face? Flapping our fingers and hands in front of our faces allows the light to enter our eyes in a pleasant, filtered fashion.
In the water it’s so quiet and I’m so free and happy there.
People with autism have no freedom. The reason is that we are a different kind of human, born with primeval senses. We are outside the normal flow of time, we can’t express ourselves, and our bodies are hurtling us through life.
we may appear to resemble small children—our fondness for gentle, kind, beautiful things—but we tend to prefer simpler, more straightforward stories, not because of childishness, but because we can more easily guess what’s going to happen next.
What we just don’t do are disputes, bargaining or criticizing others. We’re totally helpless in these scenarios.
Q42Why do you memorize train timetables and calendars? Because it’s fun! We get a real kick out of numbers, us people with autism. Numbers are fixed, unchanging things.
The number 1, for example, is only ever, ever the number 1. That simplicity, that clearness, it’s so comforting to us.
If I’m just running for fun with my friends, I find I can run as long as I want to—it’s as if I’m making friends with the wind.
Q45Why do you enjoy going out for walks so much? My guess is that lots of people with autism like walking, and I wonder if you can work out why. “Because walking makes you feel good?” “Because it’s great being out in the open air?” Both these replies are true, of course, but for me the number one reason is that us people with autism love the greenness of nature.
people with special needs, nature is as important as our own lives. The reason is that when we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies get recharged.
The greenness of nature is the lives of plants and trees. Green is life. And that’s the reason we love to go out for walks.
Kamakura, where there’s this huge statue of Buddha.
Buddha himself was saying to me, “All human beings have their hardships to bear, so never swerve away from the path you’re on.”
Everybody has a heart that can be touched by something. Crying isn’t necessarily about sadness or meltdowns or being upset. I’d like you to bear that in mind, if you would.
Simply put, people with autism never, ever feel at ease, wherever we are. Because of this, we wander off—or run away—in search of some location where we do feel at ease.
We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.
Q53Why are you obsessive about certain things? We don’t obsess over certain things because we like it, or because we want to. People with autism obsess over certain things because we’d go crazy if we didn’t. By performing whatever action it is, we feel a bit soothed and calmed down.
On the point of tears, the white dove said, “I’ve been searching for the path to happiness for a long, long time, but I still can’t find it anywhere. And I’m supposed to be the bird of peace, too…” The black crow was surprised to learn that even a bird as beautiful and as loved by everyone as the white dove nonetheless had deep problems to worry about. His answer was this: “But all paths are one connected path.”
And because people with autism aren’t skillful talkers, we may in fact be even more sensitive than you are.
Stuck here inside these unresponsive bodies of ours, with feelings we can’t properly express, it’s always a struggle just to survive.
And it’s this feeling of helplessness that sometimes drives us half crazy, and brings on a ...
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When this is happening to us, please just let us cry, or yell, and get it all out. Stay close...
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And when the light of hope shines on all this world, then our future will be connected with your future.
A book can achieve such sales only on its own merits.
moji-ban is a much-needed handrail, mind map, and concentrator of thought.
