The Sweet Smell of Creativity

All that is considered organic can and does emit gases. :] Some of those gases are more pleasant smelling than others but they all provide proof of activity. Even what begins to die, in some ways, creates new activity that we can recognize by it's scent.

The thing is that we all must contend with the activity in our environment. The activity that gives us the most joy as well as most aggravation can come from the other humans in our environment. No matter how much we may try to avoid certain people or certain aspects of how some people behave, our attempts at trying to escape the patterns that make us uncomfortable often carve a path directly to what we were hoping it was possible to ignore. This can create a new beginning for those who are in search of one.

The efforts made to protect a piece of wood with paint or stain is similar to the glazing and preservation of a piece of clay. This application does not protect the life of these things but rather it stops their life and becomes a representation of a life that once was. This memorable representation may last longer but it is no longer pliable to the elements of its environment.

People on the other hand are not only meant to be the representation of a memory that we want to keep alive but we are meant to act independently as well as respond to our environment. Doing nothing more with how we treat a living person than attempting to preserve their memory of what we wish them to be is not only futile but it creates fragile situations with breakage that can cause terrible consequences.

I think it's natural for someone whose life is chaotic (no matter how it got that way) to attempt to create structure where ever they can. If this structure can create a path of allowing for more encouraging and more creativity then I think that it is a very useful tool. Even requesting and encouraging people to respond in predictable ways with you specifically that provide boundaries for everyone involved can be a very productive and useful tool for encouraging opportunity and growth.

If instead this attempt at predictability is used to stifle or prevent growth by someone who has perceived power or a stifling method of oppression over someone else, then this will do nothing more than create rigidity and frustration for everyone involved.

Not many autistics (anymore than anyone else) probably want or need to be seen as weak or immature based on the environment we do best in. The structure in our lives can define the best ways that we can do things without needing to have some arbitrary and demeaning adjective that defines who we are as people.

Stifling growth is the opposite of providing structure. Instead, it makes sense to define the boundaries that will encourage creativity, responsibility, and the kind of maturity that allows for autistics and everyone else to provide for others in the best way we can.

When other people whose lives are more chaotic (which may include inner turmoil from undefined sources) attempt to create what they see as structure, they may have a confused view of what real structure (or the kind of structure that promotes creativity and growth) looks like. When people are feeling unnecessarily and overwhelmingly controlled by their circumstances they may focus their dissatisfaction and the disillusionment that accompanies it toward the entity they have chosen to view as the source of happiness or lack of it.

Goals then get set in rigid ways and the people who set them as well as the people expected to reach them can break under the pressure.

Everyone needs to be provided with ways to experience the fresh renewing scents that accompany structured and supported growth. Sometimes children are born without the attributes we may have hoped for or they don't achieve the goals we set for them in the way or the time that we had hoped. People come into everyones life like that at all ages. When this happens, it may be time to redefine the sweet smell of success as being more about being satisfied and happy with the achievements that we and others actually can and do make toward what we ourselves think is important instead of just depending on the attainment and achievement of unrealistic and unnecessary goals that society defines for us as our primary source of all that we call good and pleasant.