Tuesday, August 24, 2010

You don't have to be normal to be happy.

I found this very interesting and informative piece on autism. It’s a good read, a very personal view, and very useful.

Ten things everyone should know about autism.

What does autism have to do with happiness? Point 9 in the blog post is titled Autistic people can be happy without being cured.

The point ends But being a happy autistic person isn’t “being brave” or “making the best of it”. It’s quite simply being happy. You don’t have to be normal to be happy.

This is quite liberating for me: I don’t have to be normal to be happy. Or, as Gretchen Rubin will say, everybody’s Happiness Project will look different.

The autistic person’s happiness project is of course a good bit more difficult than the the neurotypical’s, so my slightyly ideosyncratic happiness project may also work for me, but it might not be easiest.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Waiting.

There’s one thing that’s very detrimental to my happiness, and I consider making a Happiness Commandment out of it. I think it would be “Don’t Wait.”

This is not the kind of “wait” found in procrastination. This is the kind of wait as in “waiting for”. If I wait for somebody to phone, for somebody to come around, for something to happen, and there’s no deadline or no certain time to it, I become unhappy. I’m not sure about the emotions involved, I just notice that I become passive and after a while I feel unhappy.

Yesterday afternoon I saw a friend in passing, and she said “I’ll call you tomorrow.” This morning I wondered if I should wait for the call, and I realized that the promise was so vague and unlikely that I would just be waiting for something that won’t happen. This realization (which was not particularly new) pointed me towards a part of my assumptive world that I can change to improve my happiness.