Challenge Your Software

This week I interviewed two art teachers for an article about mentally disabled adults – or “neurologically diverse,” as the two prefer to describe their collaborators.

While the article was about art and creativity, the processes and the products, and how and what we can learn from such surprising sources, something else occurred to me in the process of creating the article.

My friend, Daniel Potter, gave me this analogy of our brains - we have different hardware so our software does not run on their operating systems. The neurologically diverse generate their own programs.

That’s huge. They are so free and uninhibited in their expression of art and life. Do you have to be neurologically diverse to be able to create your own brain mix?

What if we all could? What if we all did? Imagine the scenario.

Daniel also explained how views of this group of people are changing. Where it used to be that they were mostly hidden away and looked upon as defective human beings, over time they have become more integrated into our communities and interactions. However, now some are beginning to question if indeed these people are far from damaged. Comparatively free of social conditioning, the very element that seems to damage so many of us so-called non-mentally damaged people, perhaps their conditions and ways hold a key to personal and creative freedom.

With different basic brains (hardware), neurologically diverse people don’t respond in standard ways to our social software programs that are soaked in cultural conditioning. All the socialization that we inevitably succumb to (to varying degrees) just does not work on their systems (to greatly varying degrees).

Here is something to think about. If their brains can create their own concoction, shouldn’t any brain be able to?

What if we changed our software? If we ejected or uninstalled the software piece with the pre-conceived notions, along with the one on conscious judgments of ourselves and others, and the one that makes us measure everything in life according to others – better or worse, bigger or smaller, more or less, more successful or less, taller or shorter, darker or lighter…and then installed a custom-made disk with lots of white space for openness and discovery and choice of channels, what might happen?

I don’t have to explain what might happen, let your imagination roam.
But I can suggest that we try to wrestle our understanding of how our brains work with the help of such a simple image to realize how so much of our daily functioning has to do with outdated software, software we just let sit and get dusty while too often spitting out tired and repeated solutions – only to make us feel un-free, unable to let go of old stuff, unable to move on, create new things, new lives, and so on.

This is a level of responsibility to consider: it implies taking full responsibilities for our dreams and hopes, wanting to live without the struggle, but always having the option of choosing a more personal way to accomplish things, to grow, and to enjoy life.
Life skills could be factory installed, and not forgotten.

One could argue that we are the mentally disabled with all the layers of fog and anxieties, fears and whatnots most people drown in, unable to get to the core of life.

Here is a wake-up call for all of us. When we feel fortunate to have been born healthy and so-called undamaged, let’s think again. What happened to the un-damaged that those born so-called damaged cannot lose? What can we learn from each other?

If you are tickled by such a scenario, as I am, of being in charge on such a level of our own experience, make a decision to review your software and decide what goes and what stays. Then install something new. All by yourself.