Lent Day 3

In a "This I Believe" essay on NPR, autistic professor, author, designer, and activist Temple Grandin writes:

"Because I have autism, I live by concrete rules instead of abstract beliefs...When I was a child, my parents taught me the difference between good and bad behavior by showing me specific examples. My mother told me that you don’t hit other kids because you would not like it if they hit you. That makes sense. But if my mother told me to be "nice" to someone, it was too vague for me to comprehend. But if she said that being nice meant delivering daffodils to a next-door neighbor, that I could understand...Some people might think if I could snap my fingers I'd choose to be "normal." But I wouldn't want to give up my ability to see in beautiful, precise pictures. I believe in them."

I love words so much. The value of words is that they are static, leave little room for change and interpretation. That's why you can put them in a dictionary and draw from them. But the value of words is ultimately the reason they will always fall short. We can learn so much from such an insightful woman many of us would consider not normal and disabled.

Take the word love, for instance. Love cannot be reduced to words in a definition. What does love look like? Love looks like a hug. Love looks like a mother holding her baby. Love looks like tears on the face of a man while I ask him if he's prepared himself for the sure and honest fact that his wife will die, and soon. Every day I am humbled by the beautiful, precise pictures.