When I say that no one is broken, I mean that no one can be deprived of their freewill. I had not thought much about freewill until I had children. My first son, Max, was a great teacher in this regard. He got to teaching early. When he was two we moved him from his crib to his Big Boy Bed. How exciting! We tucked the little bugger in, kisses and kisses, you’re a big boy now, and crept out to our bedroom across the hall, two proud parents delighted in the miracle of life. Ten minutes later we heard the thump-thump-thump of toddler feet, a door opened and closed, and there he was, standing in our doorway, beaming with discovery. Look what he could do! He could leave his room if he wanted. He was free! Adorable, but back in he went. Until he came out again. And again, and again, and again. Jen and I would eventually have to station ourselves in a chair outside his bedroom door to send this little boomerang back to bed. Parenting in this way became a journey into the depth and meaning of freewill. I soon understood that no matter the appearance, my children did absolutely nothing because I told them to. It was in fact impossible to make anyone choose anything, even a tiny person who could not dress himself. Choice occurred within a sovereign realm, and no amount of yelling, threats, or bribes could cross that boundary. What we called compliance or obedience was really an agreement. And then Sawyer came along, and by and by he received his diagnosis, and now people were talking about him as if he had no freewill. His behaviors, it seemed, were not his choice, but some kind of mechanical manifestation of this thing that had happened to him called autism. Usually, this perspective was an expression of compassion. Who on earth would choose such a limitation? No, this has happened to these children, they were victims of some genetic bad luck, and it was our job to help them and feel sorry for them. It was only when I began to view Sawyer’s behaviors as a choice – albeit a choice made with limited information – that I actually felt I could help him. That is to say, like every other person on earth, all Sawyer wanted was to be happy. For a time, he did not understand how to be happy while playing with other people, and so he played only by himself. Our job was to find a way to reveal to him the pleasure of other people’s company so that he could choose it if he so wished, which eventually he did. But first we had to acknowledge that his will was as free as ours. It was tempting at times to believe otherwise. There were days he seemed so unreachable to us that it was easier to simply call him broken, to believe that we could not find a way to reach him because there was nothing to reach, that his behaviors were as immutable as the ticking of a clock. It was a story we told in exhaustion and frustration, and a story that left us feeling hopeless about Sawyer and ourselves. There are certainly times I wish I had no freewill, that I could wake up and there would be a list of activities and thoughts and conversations left for me on my dresser that if followed would lead to my perfect wellbeing. I know all too well my capacity to choose my own misery. But I have also known the delicious pleasure of choosing to agree with life. In that moment the idea of surrendering my freewill seems as suicidal as it does impossible, for life’s pleasure is not simply being happy, but choosing to find happiness again and again and again. I welcome feedback and questions. Feel free to post any comments or questions below, or contact me directly.
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I've heard said that if spirituality isn’t practical it isn’t spirituality. I have to agree, though depending on what you have lived, the word spirituality can have if not impractical then at least passive connotations. If you have a child on the spectrum, passivity seems not to be an option. For many such parents, their child’s life seems like a call to action. Spirituality, meanwhile, remains that thing you can do to calm the hell down after a long day spent driving to therapies, or calling doctors, or just wondering when and if your life will ever return to the normal you once imagined it might be. If spirituality were only meditating once a day, or going to temple, or reading Eckart Tolle, then perhaps this would be true. But in reality spirituality refers, among other things, to the part of our life that cannot be perceived by the five senses – our thoughts, emotions, imagination, and intuition. We cannot merely turn these parts of ourselves off, we cannot stop thinking or feeling, or even imagining or intuiting. What I think and feel about someone or something always determines what I do or say. In this way, the inside and the outside are not separate at all. Which is why No One Is Broken is a spiritual answer to the question of autism. The first and best thing my wife and I did with our son was to join him, which was to do what he did no matter how odd it appeared. Yet we had to join him without judgment or he wouldn’t let us join him, and the only way to do something without judgment is to see it as correct instead of incorrect. What we did physically meant less than we did mentally – or, more accurately, perceptually. For me, the worst part of having a child diagnosed on the spectrum was not the I. E. P. meetings, or the long and expensive trips to San Francisco, or the looks from strangers in stores, but the fear. The fear that he would never be what I wanted him to be and that somehow this would rob me of my own happiness; the fear that there was truly something wrong with him, that he had lost at the roulette wheel of life and genetics, and if it were so for him, then why not me. It was the fear of a broken world, a place where the unlucky could fail for no reason, and where happiness is something that arrives periodically when the pieces of life arrange themselves for a moment before falling apart once again. There was absolutely nothing more practical I could do for Sawyer or for myself then learn to see a world without broken people. I didn’t want to live in a broken world, and so how I could possibly entice my son to join me there? To see a world without broken people I had to travel to a place within me beyond the view of any human eye or microscope, a place without judgment or comparison or failure. This was where I wanted to live. It was always there for me if I could only remember to find it, and who better than my own child to remind me that I had wandered from home. I welcome feedback and questions. Feel free to post any comments or questions below, or contact me directly.
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William Kenower
I am the author of Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence, and Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion. Learn more here. Archives
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