Sunday, August 13, 2006

Recognizing our Gifts of Life and Those that Others Have (and Don't Have)

Today our houseguests will leave our house after a six day visit. Their younger son is autistic. Being around him is instructive in so many ways. His world is very different from all of the rest of us. I was with his father and him inside a live butterfly exhibit yesterday at a science museum. He was scared when the butterflies came towards us. Telling him that they couldn't and wouldn't hurt us at all wouldn't mean the same thing as it would to a "normal" child.

We often don't recognize the gifts that we may have by being "normal" as well as "exceptional" in so many parts of our lives. Seeing and feeling the gifts that this young boy has is also important.

How often in our lives we don't take the time to see and feel important parts of ourselves. We often also are impatient and overly judgmental. We were driving up a large hill behind a fairly large motorcycle yesterday with 3-4 large parts of it intended for holding possessions. It was a touring cycle. Its driver was going quite slowly and finally we passed it.

We looked back and the driver was a perhaps 75 year old man. We smiled and talked of how our image of the driver had changed as well as our acceptance of how slow he drove.

Can we understand far more complex and important things around us in our day-to-day lives?

Thanks!

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