ethos

In learning about my sensory processing world (which should be uncontroversial, and just a normal part of getting old–I’m almost 60, and I feel like I’m just getting started), I’m learning that ‘spacial thinking’ is just not an accepted part of everyone’s operating system or language. In recognizing aphantasia (inner blindness to visual memory) as part of my sensory punchcard of blindnesses that open other windows, I’ve also recognized that I have a deep memory and skill information stored in my bodyandmind spatially. I can’t visualize my mother’s face, but I can imagine myself sitting in the skating rink in Klamath Falls OR in 1978 and point to all of the features there, relative to my position. I can imagine myself in my mother’s apartment and point to all of the rooms and some of the things (not all of the things: there are a lot of things in my mother’s apartment). I can’t see them, but I can point to them, spatially.

So anyway, this is just a quick note to say that some of us think spatially, and try to describe the world that we see spatially, and that in doing what is perfectly normal for me, some folks experience a cognitive load when conversing with or reading me. And some of these folks experience this cognitive load as “ryk being difficult.”

Pause for a moment, and imagine a whole lifetime of being told that you’re difficult, just because you’re trying to work with the operating system you’ve been given. And then consider giving a difficult person a big ol’ hug. I could use a big ol’ hug a lot of the time that I’m being asked to filter my experience through someone else’s operating system. It’s a whole process. Hugs all around.

Anyway, it’s notable and refreshing to be affirmed by examples of spatial thinking from history. Please give someone a hug, and enjoy the depth and breadth and height of this example of spatial thinking (or spatial feeling, actually, if thinking and feeling are different for you–they’re not for me).