Aware of More Important Things.

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People with AS/HFA are often thought of as being less aware of the world around them, but I find this a neurotypicalcentric view.

True, we can be very oblivious to the rules of social interaction, but for all the time I spent NOT socializing, I spent thinking and observing, and it seems to me, that I was very aware of things that others paid no attention to.

I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but to me, when I would watch others at school on the playgroud or in a crowd, they alwaus reminded me of of a flock of the more social species of birds like penguins, completely fixated on other people and rarely, if never, looking up to acknowledge everything else in the world around them.

It seems to me they spend far less time focusing on the nature of their existence than I did. They were far less focused on things like the concept that the Earth is not flat. They were far less interested in observing nature and wondering about things. They seldom stopped to examine the fine details of their hands and entertain the thought that their fingers almost look like people. They seldom stopped to notice the interesting rocks on the ground or look at a drop of water and wonder about the diffraction pattern as they squinted at the light reflecting off of it.

They reminded me of the ants I would watch going back and forth every day maintaining their colony and only concerned with ant type things, oblivious to the true nature of their wonderful world.










Then again they also get a lot more things done.

How very true

And yes, I have a smiley face on both of my thumbs, which if held together make an even wider smiley face

I'm aware of the trees around me, and the birds that fly by me. I'm also aware of the wind that blows through my hair, and the many different snowflakes that fall from the sky, on a cold Winter's day. I'm aware of the dew on the morning grass. I'm also aware of all the different people, who come in all shapes and sizes. I'm also a much better person for it.

I feel this way too. The "more important" part is relative I guess, although I do enjoy the watching and studying, and take a small amount of pride in the sense of a more open mind. I think it links into the Total Perspective Vortex topic a little bit as well, which was about how most people don't have a particularly realistic view of themselves or the world around them.

For me I think that extra interest in the physical world at large is part of having a creative nature as well. I tend to take note of combinations of colours, textures, lighting, etc, that are pleasing or interesting to the eye, and mentally file them away for later use. Or just drink in the overall atmosphere of a place at an interesting time of day, or during interesting weather, and so on. It's arrogant to assume that most others are oblivious to those things, but if they do notice and appreciate them then they hide it pretty well.

Autistic people are morbidly self-absorbed and this is why they are so unattractive to everybody else.

Being aware of your surroundings does NOT mean lengthy introspective diatribes on 'the meaning of life' et al, etc, so on and so forth.

Depends on what we're talking about. If it comes to topics like actors and such, I'm not gonna be very well aware of what's going on because I don't care too. Now if it's something like the nature of people, I think I'm pretty well aware of that, but even that could be wrong. I feel like I see multiple sides to an argument between multiple people that normally doesn't get brought up at all because they're too focused on "I'm right, your wrong, shut up!"