I am dyslexic. By definition this means I have difficulty with words.... and numbers... and handwriting... and motor coordination... and.... well to be honest describing dyslexia can be complicated. Some call it a learning disability but I beg to differ. It’s just that dyslexics have a different learning style than most people and when placed in an environment that is rigid in its instructional manner... you know... the assembly line style of learning that almost every school and academic institution employs... then yes it becomes a problem. But this problem is can be compared to a tall man trying to enter through a door that was made for someone half his high.
Being dyslexic can be cumbersome when dealing with daily life stuff. Like paying bills, keeping grocery lists in check, dealing with government bureaucracy (though admittedly almost everyone finds that process troublesome) and so on. Because we have difficulties dealing with such things some people might see us as "stupid"... "Lacking"... "Unqualified"... we are judged by a world that expects us to comply and be homogenic, when our reality is that we are anything but homorganic or compliant with the established structure. It makes us dyslexics.... rebels.
Yes. Dyslexia can be a burden sometimes... Frustrating more than anything else because most humans have a need to belong and we have this constant nagging feeling that we do not belong. I cannot speak for most of my dyslexic brothers and sisters around the world but at least I myself try not to be arrogant, knowing that the way my brain works is far more complicated than that of the average person. Some say dyslexics think in images. This is true to some extent but it does not paint the whole picture since we dyslexics tend to think not just with pictures, but with all our sense and the contents of our body. It is a little bit like ESP. or at least how I define ESP. Extra Sensory Presumption, in my opinion, is not some supernatural thing that we have inside of us. But because we rely on our senses to learn, we give the appearance of having supernatural ESP like abilities. Dyslexics can anticipate and can come up with answers to questions no one can answer..... But we are not always accurate and being arrogant only sets us in our ways and stops us from realizing our mistakes. Honesty is important to a dyslexic. Honesty towards others and honesty towards ones self. The reason: we get carried away very easily and our imagination can run amok mixing in with reality in a hard to separate mélange of thoughts and experiences. Honesty plays the role of anchoring us in the here and now when we have the tendency to infinitely float free of gravity.
Being as dyslexic as I am, I have a hard time finding the right words to describe how my brain works. But I keep trying to give it a shot every now and then. So here goes:
Sometimes my brain is triggered in to processing at a hyper speed. A burst of thoughts that dissipates quickly and that crunches more data than my consciousness can sort through and analyze and certainly more than our poor short term memory can handle. A dyslexics short term memory synapses are not on par with other more normal people. The trigger can be anything; a smell, an idea, a word, a touch, a sound, a site... anything. When our brains are triggered it lights up like a transparent light bulb in a very dark room. For those of you have lived with electricity rationing and problematic power grids like I have will understand the image I am trying to paint here. Back home in Lebanon we where plagued by electricity problems and sometimes the power is restored for a fraction of a second and usually at a higher voltage and current than normal so the lights seem brighter than they should be for that fraction of a second before the light diminishes again. When my brain lights up it is like the proverbial light bulb. It is intense and brilliant and reveals everything within its environment at the speed of light. When a thought is triggered it is a complete thought that can, if it were translated to words, fill up several volumes of books on the subject of that thought... literally. For instance, If i where to think about say creating a new educational system, my mind lights up and produces thought patterns that would lay down the details of everything that is required, every possibility that would be achieved, every little detail that can be thought of, all in just a fraction of a second. But then the power is cut off and the light diminishes softly and everything I thought of recedes in to the darkness from which it came from leaving grasping for straws to hold the thoughts together. A lot of the details are lost because of my short term memory and because of the sheer speed at which the information flows to my consciousness. Like the proverbial light that diminishes and leaves an afterglow until our eyes have adjusted again to the darkness of the room.
That is one of my frustrations with being dyslexic in a world of non-dyslexics; That I can never fully explain or convey these incredible thoughts of things and solutions to problems adequately enough for others to understand what I try to explain unless they take the time to patiently ask questions in an effort to comprehend rather than dismiss me as a lunatic or a fool. I know because I am living proof that dyslexics can come up with unconventional simple solutions to massive complicated problems. I have done it so many times that those who made the effort to listen and understand have nicked named me the miracle maker. Yet the majority of people usually look at me as if I was insane.... which is probably not far removed from the truth but there is a stark sanity to my madness. That much I know and believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment