What is Neurodiversity?
Let’s say in your bloodline there were storytellers, creative people who made up stories and those who memorised stories that they could pass on, embellish them and draw people in. Let’s say your great great great grandmother was a story teller who passed on stories of old, along with recent happenings in a way that kept people enthralled. She was a smith of words, a teller of tales and had a memory for detail like no one else in her village. Let’s say you were her child who listened and learned and passed the stories down the generations as well as keeping your friends spellbound with tales of adventure, morals and beauty.
How do you think your child and your children’s children might learn best today?
Now, let’s say your great great great grandfather was a helper, a tradesman of sorts, a jack of all trades, a gifted handyman who thatched people’s roofs, helped to build their shelters, helped with the harvest and made things that everyone found a use for. He saw things in his mind, could bend things to his will and made things that others would never even dream of.
How do you think his children and children’s children might learn best today?
Imagine your great great great ancestors who farmed the land, knew what way the weather would be just by listening to the wind. Ancestors who grew crops and learnt the ways of nature’s cycles so that they and others could eat. They took cuttings and seed and made life were there was none before.
How might these people’s families learn best in today’s world?
Perhaps your bloodline leads you back to night hunters, those who needed great eye sight in the dark, who could see and sense while others slept. How might these people’s family today interact in a bright world where there is no need for their night seeing skills?
What if your ancestors were caring, nurturing people who felt the pain and needs of others? What if they were the ones who heard a mysterious call in the middle of the night as their neighbour who lived three miles away was drawing their last breaths and they ran to be with them?
How do these empathetic people live in our world today?
What of the carpenters, the bakers, the blacksmiths, the writers, the tanners, the protectors of the past who exchanged their goods and time for something that they couldn’t do but someone else could offer?
What do their children’s children look like today?
What happens when we forget our bloodlines and our history and ancestry?
We get all sorts of made up “conditions” when we forget who we were and how we once learnt and worked together.
We survive today because each of us brings something to this world, we all serve each other but we somehow have forgotten that.
“What about those with no skills ?” I hear you say. “What about those who cannot do anything for themselves and rely on others” I hear you whisper like I haven’t considered them.
Truth is we only say those sort of things when we view each other through a capitalist lens, a lens that has been imposed on us without our knowing. A lens that we do not need, a lens that serves the few and not the many.
Every human being and every life force brings something beautiful and meaningful to our lives. All of us are part of this wonderful fabric that makes up humanity. No one is more or less valuable because we all bring something whether it’s empathy, love or a helpful skill. We all bring something just by the virtue of being alive. And this is something we have sadly forgotten.
What happens when a great great great grandfather who was a blacksmith met and married a storytelling woman? What do their children’s children look like today? Someone who worked with his visual mind and created with his hands and a woman who stored valuable tales, relatable events and had a huge propensity for details?
What do all of the combinations from our bloodlines look like today?
This is Neurodiversity- a remembering of times past, people past, remembering the ways we exist and learn and support each other, and a realisation that we need to see each other as our ancestors did and not as we are made to view each other now. We need to see into each others hearts and remember. This is Neurodiversity- humans have diverse ways of being. There is no wrong way to exist. There is no lesser way to exist. We are human, we are equal and we need to connect on a heart level .
