My biggest flaw

I remember asking: “Tell me what is wrong with me? What did I do wrong?”

For 30 years of my life I was not aware of the nature of this flaw. Yet there I was, stuck in my chair, frozen in one of those moments. As pathetic as some of you might view this moment to be once you find out what it is, it was a true moment of clarity for me. The type where suddenly, so much of my life that I didn’t understand before fell into place.

It’s explained very clearly in this RSA Animate movie. My flaw is my inability to detect hidden intentions in innuendos.

RSA Animate – Language as a Window into Human Nature

This problem is partly identified by Asperger Syndrome, especially in the language area. While observing my mother side’s relatives during my trip back in Taiwan, I noticed the disconnect that they show while conversing with others. The conversations were not fluid transitions from one topic to another, but abrupt changes based on random thoughts that were being considered inside of their minds. During these conversations, I would remember how the red headed one and I had a in depth discussion about this strange habit and I would think about the efforts I made to change this social abnormality. Thus I was able to discover this while visiting my relatives.

Even though I knew there was a difference and a potentially psychological one, I couldn’t quite grasp what it is. Understanding that genetically I am predisposed to having a psychological one, but knowing that it is not the exact same ones as those of my relatives are experience. I set it aside as an intrigue to investigate and went on with my life… That is until I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayan Rand.

Long story short, it was amazing, to see my thought process played out in Hank Rearden’s reflections. He is someone whose values echoes that of mine… well, my old values before I was corrupted by society. The thoughts of a hard cold logical mind that loned for the contiguity between human behavior and speech and his continuous struggle to make sense of why people are behaving and speaking with him in a particular way.

There are other philosophies that were discussed in the book which resonated within me but I am not going to reflect upon it today. Those are for when I’ve had sufficient time to reflect upon its premises. Mainly, the potential error, in taking the philosophy of a fictional world at its face value and believing it to be true of the real world. Is that my logical mind thinking?

In any case, even Atlas Shrugged, as heavy and controversial as it is, still didn’t manage to pinpoint the exact nature of my problem. That is, until I found the embedded movie at the beginning of the post. This opens a lot of things. For beginners,I will be able to conscientiously dedicate some thoughts to try and detect it, or if not, my failure to detect the hidden meaning. Through constant trial and error and hopefull some luck, I should at least be able to achieve a medicrum of understanding. Good enough to get by.

I am like a fish, learning how to breath oxygen on dry land.