Life Could Be Different

 

Think Different.

That was the slogan that ran in the ads for Apple, back during the years of 1997 until 2002. 

This was the first run of ads following the return of Steve Jobs at the Apple helm. For me, it was insanely great. It gave me validation for having experienced a lifetime of thinking different. It was a beacon for those of us who found ourselves going against the grain, whether we wanted to or not. And this is what Steve was all about. Embracing the uncommon. The unexpected. Doing things in a way that has never been done before.

It proposed that humanity sometimes needed a little push forward. And that it was those that everyone called crazy, that were crazy enough to think that they could change the world.

If you have not seen the ads, I suggest you watch both versions. One was narrated by Steve Jobs, but Apple went with the one by Richard Dreyfuss.

The whole idea of Think Different is to question what everyone else is thinking. For me, this occurred naturally, if not daily. Even to this day, as I write this, I find myself questioning the things most people do and the way the world has formed.

A good example of this, is the current tendency of everyone to react to and reject anything that could potentially be seen as offensive to someone’s sensitivities. A colleague was debating whether or not to dress up as an old man, using a cane, in the spirit of a school spirit week. His fear was that he would be stereotyping old people as using canes, and that this could be offensive to old people. To me, this was insane. Have we really become to vigilant and hyper-aware of the potential offence to a specific sector of humanity that we feel the need to predict and protect their feelings?

I don’t get it.

But at the same time, I kind of do. I see a world that follows blindly, whatever is popular or trending. Everyone jumps on that bandwagon and nobody questions it. Ideas spew forth from a source, gain momentum, and everyone just nods their heads and follows suit. Not only that, but then some of those followers takes things to a new level. And what maybe started out as a good thing (in the case of being aware of sensitivities) rides a pendulum swing to the extreme.

And nobody questions any of it.

Because if you did question it, you would be received with shock and scorn, for being so offensive. Insensitive. Nobody wants THAT. So everybody just does what everybody else is doing. And that is akin to spinning our wheels; staying stuck in the same spot. No progress, and nothing new. No new thinking. No new ideas. But the Think Different ad campaign highlighted moments and individuals in history who did ‘think different’, and because of them doing so, humanity was pushed a little more forward. When Steve did it, people called it his ‘Reality Distortion Field’. He would envision something that did not exist yet, and his engineers would be dumbfounded about how to proceed, stating that what he proposed could not possibly exist, because the technology to support and develop it didn’t exist. Steve would throw a tantrum and demand they invent the technology then. And what do you know? It worked. They did and the thing he envisioned became a reality. 

And humanity was pushed, a little more forward.

The tendency with human beings tends to be to keep doing what has always been done. Because doing the unexpected can be very uncomfortable. We all want to fit in with one another. We don’t want alienation or upset. We don’t want to be singled out, scorned and bullied and mocked and diminished for saying or doing stupid things. And the consensus seems to be that if nobody has thought of it before, it must be really stupid. I mean, there is no basis for that stupid idea of yours, so how could it possibly work?

Well, I think some of us don’t have a choice, when it comes to coming up with stupid ideas.

They were born against (not born again) the grain. History has called them insane. The crazy ones. But perseverance has proven them to be geniuses. And I strongly suspect, with everything we are now learning about brain development and intelligence, that these insane geniuses were most likely on the high end of the Autism Spectrum.

At least, that is how I have come to know my own process and struggle. I did not ask to be like this. It is a difficult path. Full of resistance and rejection. And while I may present normal enough, it soon becomes clear to others that there is something different about me. It makes me wonder about why, and how this happened. I know my mother was a different thinker and feeler. She questioned things. She had unique ideas. She was a creative person. So maybe she in part imparted a lot those tendencies onto me. And maybe some was even inherited genetically.

There is a lot more to unpack and delve into around that. The entire Autism experience can be very hard to understand and define. That is why it is a spectrum. It is so vast and varied. And we are only just beginning to understand and accept it for what it is. And it seems people have a hard time with that, understanding that which doesn’t fit into their box of expectations. I believe that those on the Spectrum are a natural result of nature’s way of evolving. They come from a need for betterment. And there is great comfort and promise in that. I think we should trust the process. Learn to trust the crazy ones, a little more. Be more open to new ideas and fresh thinking. Be more open to new ideas and thinking. To do so might inspire more of the same…

And to think, life could be different.