It’s interesting and challenging to be a person who apparently perceives the world differently than others. I wonder whether it’s neurological, psychological, or something else. I wonder, am I on “The Spectrum?” I don’t know. I just know that I seem to perceive the world differently than most people. I apparently don’t make the same assumptions that other people make. I’ve always liked to think that I wasn’t making the same stereotypical judgments that others were making, that I was outside their prejudices. But how would I know? I do know that I’ve often chosen non-standard answers to life questions.
When I was a around twenty, and pretty much a
pacifist, my father asked: “If someone
attacked you, wouldn’t you defend yourself?”
I replied, “It would depend on what I wanted to
accomplish.”
When I was in graduate school, a man from India
asked me what I would do if I was adrift on the ocean in a boat with a friend,
and we only had enough food for one of us.
I said I thought perhaps if we shared and tried hard, we might somehow both
end up surviving. He said, “That’s your
Western approach.” His approach was more
like, he would drown himself so that I could survive.
People like to take their own attitudes as obvious—but
there’s often a different way of looking at things.
