A good story has to have certain elements: Wants and needs and fears and whatnot of the character, a goal, a setting, some conflict.

And what is our life but a story told?
Whose ears it is for, we can decide for ourselves. Whose standards it should meet we can decide ourselves, but not always choose. Some of our wants we can decide, some needs we can’t really do anything about. The setting is a whole topic in itself, made of so many variables!

Conflict rises when people don’t see eye to eye and can’t meet each other on common ground.

Goals.

Goaaaaaals.

Gooooooals.

Ugh, hardout stuff those. If you set them, truly, they might become true. If you don’t set them, everything stays the same (there are people who like that idea). The goals to choose from might evolve with every decision we make, but that might just be less daunting than one might imagine.

But I want to talk about the goals most people wouldn’t call goals. Even many neurodivergent people haven’t discovered calling those things goals. We don’t (let ourselves) see that we reach SO MANY goals on a daily basis!

First off, the easy-to-see ones, with their given limitations respectively:

• Work is easy with a clear task, given that it is clear and you can see it positively done each day

• Travel is easy with a clear itinerary, given that it is one that meets your needs (e.g. your own plans)

• Projects are easy with a clear purpose, given that they have a definite finish line

• Living with other people is easy when they make clear what is right to do, given that you trust them fully

But do we only live for Work, for Travel, for Projects, for doing what others like?
Isn’t there a whole area, sometimes feeling like a vacuum, where you find mundane and wonky activities that some do like this and others don’t do and even others have different ideas about their importance altogether?

What is the goal of laundry, of eating healthy, of vacuuming, of doing dishes, of cleaning the sink, of seeing people, of going outside, of education, of sorting stuff, of keeping bugs out?

Just Daily Life.

Drawn to things that are clear, this collection of often literally grey areas feels like a great riddle of life itself, ever-growing and raising more questions as you try to make heads or tails of it.

Surely, all of them were once invented, developed and introduced for good reasons, but those are less prominent than the traditions and mannerisms which were born out of taught behaviour.
As a bottom-up-thinker, I like to understand the Why, but in everyday life, the Why is often obscured behind many layers and conflicting interests.

In the absence of a feasible valid reason, I tend to be latching on to any sense of an activity I see fit, trying to find intermediate purposes that correlate with my personal values and the elements of my own story.

And when there are no great story arches to live through in my story at times, then I like to focus on the smaller ones, which are equally dramatic, satisfying and happiness-bearing in and of themselves!

It is easy to be told what to do. The reason why we do it, is to be happy, ultimately. And to find happiness quickly when not told what to do, in our own time, by our own rules, following a most unique story, that is a power to behold!

This I have heard often in life. It is right though, you’ll hear me having thoughts about much ‘deep’ stuff, without having had any active interest in philosophy itself.

‘With Oli, no thing has ever been just simple.’, dad reflects. And yes, even my apprenticeship as a software developer was anything but a walk in the park.
Many of my gifts of perception, noticing patterns and rules I could make use of, but with the pressing question of ‘Why?’ I seemed not to pursue the right direction.

I have always wanted to get to the bottom of things, wanted to know how it works, which rules really apply, where I can be absolutely sure. Books, role models and patient, trustworthy people and a sound image of the world always were of aid in the process.

The Why of it all

We all love it, not to have to think about everything from scratch.
To accomplish that, we make use of premade solutions and concepts. Language constructs, ethic convention, also laws and tradition tend to ease everyday life.

While humans mostly wander the level of ‘taking the things as they are’, I find myself on another platform entirely per default:
The deeper meanings hold the most value for me, only after those I can think about all the more obvious things.
When the others went out partying, I was thinking about why you should even go party and why everybody behaved how they behaved and why I should take part in it or if I should even be able to do it. While others just watch movies for the fun of it, I much rather like to dive into the making of them. While in primary school simple sentences had to be read, I was pondering what that should do. When the others were finding mates, I was just trying to figure out how that whole thing actually works. Others practice sports, while I just think about what would be the most effective and universally applicable physical activity for me. The same with nutrition, for the household, with family.

Curse or Blessing?

The answer of why I do something decides over how I feel about that thing and how much strength of will is involved. Moreover, the soul crushing uneasiness will be unbearable, when I would get into something without a good Why at hand.

Without the realisation of what is behind the thing, I can’t really live well. Without a plausible narrative – mind you, that one can change far too quickly – I feel like my world will end.

This approach and talking about it (to ‘philosophise’) made many things possible for me and has brought me quite far, but ever so often it divides me and my fellow humans.

But be at ease: I am very lucky to have raised a sound philosophy or at least a personal explanation for most areas. Especially for the supreme discipline of human communication. My answers are at times so well put, that my way of life may inspire and enrich others. For that I am deeply thankful and that is the greatest reward!

Further more: Thanks to my gift of being able to master verbal expression, I may share this multitude of philosophies, theories, algorithms and visible-to-me underlying concepts and write them down.

So, the heft of philosophy is one that might be wholesome and helpful for the human, but will also leave significant traces when perceived constantly…

My life feels like a whirlwind on many days, which I have to fight to prevail.

Many people with autism use their masks, scripting and ways to design their encounters and daily businesses to reduce the whirl and in the best of cases even make the wind work for them.

Some of us, like me, have always felt a certain yearning. When watching shows or movies, when listening to music or looking at a theatre performance.
I then feel longing to feel those feelings too, to be able to be all overcome by one state of emotion and cry out, rejoice, sob or laugh with a clear intent that the scene provides.

Only daily life rarely, if never, gives such distinct opportunities. We are never facing a green lit box to feel to our heart’s content.
There is many objectives, rules, conventions inside the given space, other interfering feelings, connections to the people around us and if we can’t even make out those elements: A whirlwind of confusion.

One thing that I think is gotten wrong by many who look at an autistic person: We do feel so so so much. We feel so strongly, so all-embracing, so bare and hard, that our life’s purpose seems to be to contain this ever-lasting Tsunami of stimuli.
We take on our armour of many layers from an early age, to be able to fit in or at least to protect ourselves and others from the consequences of those crazy intense feels inside.

In the time when I wore all of my well-forged armour, I got into amateur stage play.
I was part of a number of small-scale productions, with a wonderful director, a loving ensemble and a constantly amazed audience.

It is fun and a nice hobby to follow, a challenge and an outlet for the own gifts to explore.

But little did I realize, that a stage play is not without reason a place of comfort for my inner workings:

• There is a script

• Someone tells you exatly how to behave

• There are no random surprises to be expected

• Each scene is rehearsed many times

• You slip out of your armour and take on another person’s mask

• There is a safe space to feel any given thing inside a closed environment

• Every aspect of your surrounding is then fixed and has a purpose

• For a short time it can be just like you would like your own story to progress every day

Of all the contradictory traits I witness myself exhibiting, my relation towards change fascinates me in a most consistent matter.

If autism refers to a state of mind that is clinically recognised to be different from the world outside of it, any influence towards it is greatly significant and an inherently sensitive act.

Disrupted routines, sudden alterations to a planned out day, added factors, an accident or an unforseen dip in the energy level can set of unfortunate series of events which can rarely be handled gracefully.

On the other hand, I am known to be different for a reason: Because I do many things differently and I like to invent new ways and happily challenge the rules and barriers I learn about.

I noticed two types of change, which are as far apart from each other as represented on my scale of likeability:

• I fear, despise, loathe and avoid change

• I love, enjoy, thrive on and sometimes more or less quirkily impose upon others changing things up

So, what sets them apart so distinctly?

It is the source of the change and how it is being introduced into my own world.

There are always rules and boundaries and goals and reasoning. So everything I do must have a reason, naturally.
This need for a reason is something I have always been extremely sensitive about. If I can not see a reason for something, I would react in unsuitable ways. Luckily, my parents shaped a world for me that provided tangible reasons and an explanation for practically everything.

So if my day or a certain period of time is all set up, it means that my reasons and all the contributing factors are aligned and balanced out to enable myself to be functional.

Enter a change: This one comes from the outside and if I have no prepared way to deal with this change (filtering out the entirety of the impact, having thought out the possibility of this exact scenario, having allowed for unforseen events already), I will have to realign from the top.

I will have to evaluate the nature and the size of the change against my whole stack of reasons, beliefs, goals great and small, my relation to every factor involved (living or no) and I will try to rebalance all those as quickly as possible, in order to be functional again.
And I better have a good reason WHY I would like to be functional..!

Examples for this: A spontaneous change of seats at the office, more people than anticipated come for a visit, the Deutsche Bahn crumples the itinerary, the chosen beforehand foods are not available at the restaurant, someone offers and makes you select a drink when you didn’t expect it.

On to the nicer side: If I see a good reason to do something differently, of course according to all current beliefs, known rules and ideas that are inside my mind, I just love to change it up and make life somewhat easier, funnier, more meaningful.

As much as I am thinking inside boundaries and search for fixed things, as much I am able to notice what is outside those borders and where the rule has no backing at all.

One thing wants to hold me back plenty of times, which is my routines. Those play a HUGE role in making myself functional to begin with.
To change up a routine, even in a small way and for the better, there has to be a certain buffer in the energy levels, beside all the reasoning.

A good reason can also be someone we trust. As long as we are convinced that they do have good reasons themselves. This gets harder when you become an adult. Who will tell you what to do in a world that spins uncontrollably?
You will tell yourself. Only the seperation of powers inside oneself is naturally weak, which then reflects onto the executive functionality…

I would love to clone myself into another being that tells me the right things and I just do those and live a happy life. But that has to be done all inside. Maybe noone knows how it is done, really.
It is like those psycholological tricks, where you are made believe that something is your own decision, so you feel good about making it. That is what must be happening inside our head at all times.

Without the vast amount of energy I am saving by my new way of working and the many solved questions over the past year, I would have never been able to change up my living situation with all the fun little changed up things inside. Yet I still fear any change that comes at me that I could not control.

I might appear courageous, but it is only the sufficient amount of known things and enough excess energy that lets me do greatly. If those are not present, I stick to my routines and live the old life, where there wasn’t much chance for change by choice.