Naivety, revisiting my Social Quality!

I always observed autistics and wondered about the fact that they are categorized as people struggling in constructing social life and developing connections, and they are ‘scientifically’ labeled as being in the spectrum. Human beings are more seen now as a continuous series of points on different axes regarding their personality and autistics are seen as being in the extreme levels on some dimensions.

So, it’s just like we are categorizing a major part of the population as ‘normal’ and therefore autists are different, ‘divergent’. I still wonder how autistics see us from their perspective and if the great part of the population were behaving like autistics, would we categorize ourselves as deviants?

What all the time I found so amazing in an autistic is his refusal to ‘social norms’ not aligning with himself, and his all the time authenticity and alignment with himself, whatever people around can think about him and his behavior. Autistic for me is synonymous with ‘Authentic’. So, what about the ‘normal’ people? Are they authentic? Not really all the time, or at least not fully, as far as we concede all of us for some social norms even if we struggle to fit in.

And considering this perspective, I wonder if all of us, when we were babies, were in some way ‘autistics?’ In the way where we were so ‘authentic’ with ourselves when starting our journey through this ‘human’ world. We were what everyone tends to qualify as ‘na?ve’.

I grew, and I guess the same for most of us, in a family and social environment all the time repeating to me; stop being naive! That’s not how things go in this world? You should be alert about what is around you, you should be smart, strong, and all the time ready to ‘fight’ whenever it is necessary. Rights aren’t given, they are taken!

And I’m still wondering, why for a lot of people being smarter, fighter, stronger… is antinomic with being na?ve? The latter in the way of being true and trusty.

Here is for the record some synonymous of naivety from the dictionary: innocence, simplicity, naturalness, trustfulness, credulity. Lot of people will state not everyone is trustful, so if you are na?ve, you’ll experience hurt. Which is true, but only when I’m waiting for something from the other side.

I was discussing with a friend last week about a positive and caring communication method that she is applying with successful results, but only when the other side is positive and sincere. So, I asked her what if the other person is not? Would you be in a harsh communication with her? Will you then fit with your values? And I’ll follow with this question: Why, in fact, are you seeking a result with the method from the other side? That’s the trick: when you associate the method with the result, you’re dependent on the sincerity of the other side. And when you associate it with your values, you fit in all the time, regardless of the result.

Returning to my story, I struggled for decades ‘fighting’ myself, rather than others, to not being na?ve, as I was asked to by my parents, my friends and almost everyone. And it took me all these years to find out finally that this didn’t help to improve my life in any way. The struggle of not aligning with myself was there all the time, and the struggle of fighting the unknown, the imaginary and the nonexistent was there all the time. It comes out that I’ll construct around myself several masks to fit in until it becomes a huge shell on my shoulders.

I’ll decide finally, once I awoken to this truth, to stop hurting myself this way, and to accept that being naive is a main part of my own self. It is my way to cultivate, sometimes outside social norms, compassion, forgiveness, and love, unconditionally, and on the way to fulfill my humanity, seeing in everyone this oneness of our humanity.

Once I awoken to this truth, I started my new life journey to let melt the carcass being constructed around myself over time, and to be reborn again from my shell. The journey will be long and still ongoing, as I must educate myself for new patterns in how to see, interact and understand this world, in a na?ve way! The journey to return to my origin!

Meanwhile, I enjoy experiencing during the process the magic behind. Whenever I leverage my naivety in my social interactions, I stop my fears and doubts, I align with my heart, I trust my inner self, and I’m free!