Earlier this month, someone I follow on social media posted a short endorsement of Daniel Bowman Jr’s book, On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity. It didn’t say much about the book, other than basically, “Hey, great book!” Given the fact that my 10-year-old son is on the spectrum, the little blurb caught my eye, and I decided to go on Amazon.com and buy the book. I thought it might help me get a better handle on how to be the parent of a child on the spectrum.
Well, it turns out that On the Spectrum isn’t really a book aimed at helping parents understand autism in children, at least not directly. Daniel Bowman is an English professor at Taylor University in Indiana who was diagnosed with autism well into adulthood. The book is really his attempt to share how his realizing that he was autistic helped him make more sense of who he is and why he had struggled with so many things growing up. In that respect, the book didn’t so much give me any “pointers” on how to raise my son better, but it did cause me to do a bit of self-reflection.
Now, to be clear, I’ve never been diagnosed as on the spectrum, and I certainly don’t consider myself, nor will I ever consider myself, to be autistic. Nevertheless, over the past ten years, as I’ve raised my son, I have seen countless behaviors and tendencies in him that I had as a kid, only with him they are more pronounced. Because of that, I’ve often wondered whether or not I would have been identified as being on the spectrum if I was a kid today. Or to put it another way, I’ve often wondered if my son’s diagnosed autism has come from some “seeds of autism” in me.
That is why On the Spectrum was rather fascinating to read. To get to the point, as I read Bowman’s description of his own autistic tendencies and (for lack of a better term) “autistic personality,” I found myself thinking, “Woah…that is a lot like me. I’ve always felt or thought that. Yep, I can relate to that, too.” That being said, there was quite a lot he said that certainly did not relate to me, at all. Still, there was plenty that did. And so, what I want to do in these next two posts is just share my reflections about certain things in Bowman’s book that caused me to look inward about the way I view both myself and the world. To be clear, this isn’t really a book review. It is my sharing my inner dialogue, sparked by this book, regarding how I’ve always viewed things…but in public.
The first similarity I found with Bowman’s experience is when he talked a bit about the fact that one of the reasons he is a writer and poet is that he, as with many autistic writers, is drawn toward metaphors, symbols, and narratives, because they “bring some order and meaning to the loneliness of being on the outside, misunderstood, rejected” (28). Obviously, being attracted to writing and poetry does not make one autistic, but it struck me that the reasons he gave as to why he was drawn to those things were basically the same things that drew me to poetry and pursuing an English Literature degree.
For me, poetry and short stories, as well as art, were ultimately exercises in theology. I immersed myself in them, not just because “I liked poetry and short stories,” but because they opened up my eyes to a deeper understanding of the world, of God, and of the human race. Too often, though, I felt like the perception of the world I gained from poetry was just different than that of other people I knew. And so, when Bowman writes, “my autistic brain wiring leads me to see storytelling and poetry and teaching and learning and worshipping God in ways that are different from what most readers will be accustomed to” (38), I find myself saying, “That is how I’ve always felt.”
A second similarity I found with Bowman’s experience is when he talked about the vast difference he feels between teaching in the classroom and larger public speaking. He says he has no problem teaching, because it is a setting that he controls and often the content is something he enjoys. On top of that, teaching is somewhat of a performative experience. By contrast, giving formal speeches to larger groups (and of full-grown adults at that!) is just a different, and often more terrifying, experience. Again, that is the exact point of view I’ve always had. Now, I’ve spoken in public a few times (a couple of sermons in church, a formal debate on campus), and despite what my outward demeanor might have conveyed, inside I couldn’t wait for it to be over as soon as I began.
Teaching in my own classroom, in a setting I control, is a completely different matter. As Bowman says, I view my classroom as my little stage where I not only teach, but I also kind of entertain my students. It wasn’t like that at the beginning of my teaching career, though. At first, I was absolutely terrified as well. My natural, introverted personality isn’t wired for that. The way I was able to adapt and get accustomed to it was simple—in my head I took on the persona of my favorite high school teacher. I had to essentially “put on a mask” first. Related to that (and this goes back to that first similarity), I ended up painting countless things on my classroom walls to further express the truth of what I was teaching in artistic form. Now that I’ve been teaching for 25 years, I think I’ve gotten quite good at it, but still, that persona I have in front of my students is not the real, inner me.
A few other similarities I found have to do with Bowman’s discussion regarding some general characteristics of people with autism: (1) the need for routine and predictability, (2) the tendency to “catastrophize” (believing you are in a worse situation than you really are), and (3) the form of self-regulation known as “stimming”—things like rocking back and forth, or other things to calm oneself.
Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I am very routine-oriented. That routine is essentially my “baseline” that gives me a sense of needed structure. To be honest, I don’t freak out if my daily routine is interrupted. I don’t by any means feel I’m a slave to that routine, but I do feel I’m on a bit of a tightrope until I can get back to that baseline.
As for “catastrophizing,” my family will tell you that ever since I was a kid, when something went wrong in my life, I acted like it was the end of the world. I still tend to do that—I emote! But I can tell you that when that happens, inside my head I know it really isn’t the end of the world. In my head, what I’m doing is getting all that frustration and anger out of my system. I view it like writing an initial rough draft. You first just have to vomit all that’s inside you out on the page. At first, it’s going to be a volatile and disjointed mess. But you have to get it all out so you can then go about making sense of it and organizing it into something meaningful, so that you can then move on.
As for “stimming,” anyone who knew me as a kid knew I had a lot of little quirks. For example, if we were playing wiffleball in the yard, or hitting flyballs for the others to catch, I had to do the following before I’d throw the ball up to hit it: scratch the top of my head, scratch my nose, scratch my Adam’s apple, then pound my belt buckle 2-3 times. To this day, even though I do it subtly to where it probably isn’t noticed, I still need to touch and put pressure on the top of my head. Also, when I was a kid, I had to touch the middle of the bottom of the glass, bowl, or plate before I used it. I also obsessed over my baseball cards, spending hours and hours by myself in our basement, making lists of every team’s roster for that year and playing “dice baseball” at such a rapid pace that my parents and siblings found it legitimately (and comically) strange.
A final similarity I found with Bowman’s experience is with a recurring theme throughout his book about how he never felt like he “fit in” anywhere and how it was hard for him to really connect with people—that feeling of being really different. Let me first summarize some of the things Bowman says. For him, really connecting with people at a relational level was always very difficult, and he couldn’t understand why it seemed so easy for others. He describes watching events in his world as watching a newscast from a foreign land. He describes that intense feeling of being an “isolated self.” And near the end of the book, he shares a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s book, Letters to a Young Poet, in which Rilke talks about the “infinite distances” and the “vast expanse” that exist between people, and how a good marriage is one “in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.”
To be clear, that is the exact viewpoint I have had throughout most of my life, especially since I was in junior high. Now, all through grade school, despite my quirks, I nevertheless felt very much a part of my family, my neighborhood, and my school. It was a very good, stable, and social environment. But when I got to junior high and was bullied quite a bit, those feelings of isolation and not ever fitting in just crashed over me, and I’ve had those deep feelings ever since. Again, I don’t think I’m autistic, but I think it is fair to say I probably had slight “autistic tendencies.” And since every person’s personality is shaped both by genetic make-up and social influences, I tend to think that the loving and stable social setting of my grade school years pretty much kept any potential “autistic tendencies/feelings of isolation and otherness” in check. But with my junior high experience, “the dam broke,” so to speak.
Ever since then, despite the public persona I may give, be it in the classroom or on social media, or whatever—despite the “face I put on to meet the faces that I meet”—in my mind, my inner self is an infinite distance from the people I meet. I remember reading Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet in my early 20s, I remember reading that specific passage Bowman quotes in his book, and highlighting it, underlining it, and starring it in the margin. That sentiment is something I have felt at the core of my being, seemingly forever.
I remember in high school, being utterly perplexed how my fellow students could date someone, be “going out” with each other, then break-up, and within a few weeks, be happily dating someone else. When I say I couldn’t comprehend that, I literally could not comprehend that. How is that possible? I have never been able to wrap my mind around a person with such a “social” personality where can do that. To be clear, I’m not criticizing them. Being able to so easily move on to a different relationship is simply beyond my comprehension. To use an old radio metaphor. Some people’s personality is like a radio station on the dial with such a strong bandwidth that if the dial is anywhere close to the signal, it’s going to be clear. My personality is like that station that is so far away that the bandwidth is barely a sliver on the dial, and unless you get it just perfect, there’s going to be static, and you won’t get a clear signal.
Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to talking about topics, ideas, news, sports, whatever—things that are outside of me—I can communicate very well. I think one of my gifts is the ability to write about and explain potentially complicated issues very clearly. But when it comes to my inner life, the person I am deep inside, I feel that “infinite distance” deeply. Even among my closest friends and family, I feel there is a vast expanse between us. If someone says they “really know” me, in my head, I think, “No, you don’t. I’m out in the Sahara desert, and even though you might not realize it, this relationship is the equivalent of face-timing on Facebook. You know the image I present–and yes, that is part of me–but there’s an significant difference between face-timing and having tea with me in the Sahara. And I’ve always had my tea alone. In that respect, there is one short poem I wrote back in 1993, when I was 23, that most closely articulates this feeling: “I have been much acquainted/with the silence between two voices/the vast desert between two human hearts.”
As I wrap up this little self-reflective post, I want to again emphasize I don’t view myself as autistic, although I think I have always had a few “autistic seeds” in me. Reading Bowman’s book has just caused me to take a little time to look a bit more deeply at myself and my personality. There is more in his book he talks about that I won’t take the time to write about, but I will continue to ponder—things like his love for liturgy because it provides structure as well as the space for creative mystery, as well as his love for the writings of Thomas Merton—both of which are core influences and loves in my life. All that said, On the Spectrum has sparked a certain amount of self-reflection that I think will bear fruit as I am in the slow process of writing (hopefully) a book about my spiritual journey.
