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NEVER ONCE DID FLOWERS GROW…
BUT FROM THE GRAVES OF GIANTS.
I hope this book ends up being one of my best creations. The best thing an autistic male can possibly do is to embrace chastity and singlehood as a divine gift, even if it’s a mysterious and inscrutable one.
I want to try and show that embracing singlehood is possible for autistic men, even if it’s difficult. That chasm in the middle of the autistic heart is an extraordinarily productive one, I have found.
And I trust that this will be true of you as well.
Not long ago, I wrote these words on Facebook:
When you think about the terrible, wicked things that are done in the name of love, it’s probably a blessing to be an autistic male. As someone who cannot string two words together in front of a woman, I am probably being spared a lot of pain in this world. And I really do think my book idea has some promise: a book about how autistic males can embrace chastity, rather than resisting it. Hopefully, one day, I will write this book, and help to deradicalize those autistic males who refuse to accept we were born to singlehood.
Now one benefit of singlehood for men, especially for those who are essentially and intrinsically single, is that it constantly keeps you on your toes. There is a certain raw energy that is a blazing, foaming torrent in the areas of intellectual, poetic and narrative-weaving work. Sexual fulfillment and marriage would be the death of the only things I have ever brought of value to the world. To be cheated into a mirage and simulacrum of ‘love’ would be an act of downright theft, if not murder… Aye, and worse than murder! Murder of the soul.
Ultimately, every living creature has its own path, or way; a ‘dao,’ as the Chinese call it.
Or again:
Every entity, alive or dead, has its own ‘goal’ or ‘end’ or ‘purpose.’ It’s telos, as Aristotle would call it.
Going against your path or your purpose cannot but result in suffering.
You did not choose your path.
Your path chose you.
And true freedom lies in choosing it again.
Reciprocity.
Railing against your purpose, lamenting your proper goal and end, does nothing to benefit you or others.
Only humility and resignation are of any avail here.
You do not have the right to that kind of happiness.
Love, marriage, family.
In this world, you have to make your own rights.
Nobody else can give you any.
But you can only make your own rights in keeping with your own intrinsic nature.
Not by going against it.
There are some forms of happiness you may well, in all probability, be forever excluded from.
But this does not mean there are not other forms of happiness you can make for yourself, and others.
Ultimately, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are only two kinds of life the autistic male can lead:
A life of complete and utter, unrelenting misery; or else a life of complete, unbridled, almost reckless, self-sacrificial, selfless love; emptying out, or what the Orthodox Church calls ‘kenosis.’ The Daoists and Buddhists of China also talk about a kind of ‘emptiness,’ xu. How to make oneself empty? By discarding all the self-will, arrogance, bitterness and hubris of the old life. To practice wu-wei, or ‘non-action,’ although it is better translated more loosely as ‘non-striving.’ To go with your inherent, intrinsic nature, and not to envy the nature of another; this is the safer path for you.
Not everyone is born to the same happiness.
Some people have one path, others another.
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