Whenever I find myself in conversation with anyone about whether or not a person can be broken, it’s not long before Adolf Hitler raises his mustachioed head. After all, who but a broken person could have dreamed and made Auschwitz? It’s all very well and good to look at your child with his various challenges and say he isn’t broken, but are we really to extend this perspective to monsters like Hitler? The answer, almost without exception, is no. It is an odd leap from children we call autistic to history’s worst villains, but it’s one I inevitably found myself making just the same. I had grown up believing in monsters. Monsters were in the movies I watched and in the books I read; they were in the newspapers, and the stories my friends and I told one another. Sometimes they were on street corners or across the playground. These monsters were the boys and men (they were always boys and men) whose actions were inexplicably cruel to me. We called their affliction evil, a thing, it would seem, that could infect a person like a permanent virus and reduce him to something less than human. Yet how is this so different than what we have come to call autism? We call a child autistic when his actions are inexplicable to us, and often view autism as something that has happened to our children. I soon had no use for this view of my son’s behaviors. Either he had freewill or he didn’t. If he had freewill, if he had the power to choose what he would say and what he would do, then I would help him choose those behaviors that were in service to his life. Until he proved to me that he had no power to choose his behaviors, I would treat him as if he did. It wasn’t long before my mind drifted to those monsters I had lived my life quietly fearing, monsters of the past and monsters of the present. What but their behaviors had earned them their monstrous title? And what exactly is the behavioral line one can cross where an action is no longer the manifestation of a perception – of seeing an enemy where there is actually a friend; of seeing a threat where there is actually safety – and is instead the command of a force greater than us, where our bodies and minds become but puppets to some invisible and wicked puppeteer? I found it impossible to hold in my mind these two opposing views humanity, to look at my boy or myself and say, “We are innocent. We are not broken because we are not our behaviors,” and then look at the men I called monsters and say they were guilty. If Hitler could be guilty then I could be guilty and Sawyer could be guilty. And so did I forgive Hitler in that moment? Not really. He was still mostly a caricature of evil in my imagination, as were many of the serial killers and dictators living and dead. I was not, however, going to hold my life hostage to these men’s gaudy atrocities. There are people I love, whom I trust and adore, who have, while caught in the momentum of anger and frustration and fear, spoken unkindly to me. In those moments, as I learned to do with Sawyer and those behaviors we called autistic, I have looked past my friends’ words to who they truly are. I cannot require myself to see everyone in the world with the same intimate clarity with which I see the people I know and love. I do not have God’s eyes. But I can hold within my heart the knowledge that no one is broken, and have faith in that which is beyond my current perception. Most of the world is beyond my current perception, and yet I can love it just the same if I can only trust that a stranger desires love the same as I desire it now. I welcome feedback and questions. Feel free to post any comments or questions below, or contact me directly.
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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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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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