Month: November 2025

I am curious about the level of resolve that enters into most of my days. From the time that I wake, I dip into a well of determination and begin a process of engagement that is guided by what I want to do, by what I choose to do. Some if it is predetermined by what I have chosen to do in the past. Some of it is recently preplanned by what I intend to do on that day.

It almost feels like a ritual that I have created to shape my day. But there is also a flexibility in it all that allows deviation from that ritualized pattern. My day progresses, guided by an evolving feeling of resolve. It may appear to many that I am inflexible, guided as I am by such a resolve. Perhaps I am both the beneficiary and the servant of my resolve.

It is curous to me because I know that meeting the expectations of others has been such a part of my life. I have always wanted to excel in ways others find acceptable. I have learned to perform, and perform well. But I also know that I have usually wanted to do it my way. I could comply, but I would do it in a way that tapped my own internal resolve. My own creativity fed my resolve, and I could still comply with the expections of others, but in a way that made sense to me.

This may have simply been a result of my being on the autism spectrum. I have wanted to live in the world of neurotypicals and get along with them. But I have wanted to do it in a way that made sense to me. I have wanted to do it my way. I have often been able to put a new, personal twist on whatever I have been doing. It would be close, but not exactly what the typial world expected.

My sense of resolve has given me a good dose of fortitude and resilience. Being able to do things my way has allowed me to be both compliant and non-compliant. I could put my own inner energy into whatever I have done, as long as I could do it my way. That inner energy has been a source of fortitude. I have confidence. I get things done, but in my own time and in my own way.

That experiece of fortitude has scarcely ever happened without the support of friends. I have often been surrounded by friends who have supported me and even valued me in how I did things my way. Because of others I have been able to live many of my days with resolve. I have been able to do things my way.

I remember very well when I decided to be close. I was twenty years old, and I recognized that I had been living in a way that did not include being close. I don’t think I understood just what that meant, but I knew I was missing something that I wanted. I have spent over sixty years exploring what that all means, and the unfolding continues.

I recognize that, for me, a number of things are involved in being close. My own transparency is a huge part of my being open to closeness and inviting others and the whole world into closeness. I have noticed that as I have become more comfortable with who I am and relaxed in sharing all aspects of me, the easier it is for me to be close. Perhaps it has something to do with being in my eighties, but I care less and less what others think and how they regard me. I will live the way I choose. I like being me, and I don’t need to put on pretense. I am at ease with being close and not worrying about how I will be seen.

Also, I have always liked my sense of touch, but that is more evident now than ever before. I like touching things. I especially like touching other people. It is not simply a sensory eperience, but it is an open door to deep awareness. I can in an instant, become aware of the presence of others, whether that be a plant in my garden or someone I know.

Touching means that I have become much more of a hugger. I hug men and women alike. Not a quick and release hug, but a lingering hug that allows me to be deeply aware of the other person. Someone recently said to me, “We all need a lot of hugs” I totally agree, as a giver and as a receiver. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I know how comfortable, even assertive I am about hugging. I sometimes wonder just how others are feeling about hugging. Most people seem to be a deep part of hugging and repeatedly hug me. But I want to feel assured that it is truly what they want.

I guess I think that hugging and, by extension, closeness is part of being human. While closeness is not unique to our species, humans have a deep engagement with being close. It has, in my mind, been one of the reasons we have prospered as a species. The experience of being close has been a huge part of why we have been successful. Even Neanderthals, I am convinced, valued and practiced what it means to be close. The presence of flowers in Neanderthal graves of individuals has been seen as evidence of abstract thinking, even some kind of religion. I think Neantherdals buried their companions with flowers because they were close to them, had a deep feeling of closeness with the dead individual.

In our culture, women seem to be more adept at hugging and all forms of closeness than men. I thnk that our culture has visited a curse on manhood saying that men should remain distant and aloof. I want to join what women seem to find and enjoy. Being close is a dramatic and central feature of being human. Regardness, I am choosing to be close. My resolve has not wavered since, at twenty years old, I set my sights on being close. It is who I am.

I continue to stroll through evolving notions of what it means for me to be open to the world. I constantly explore what it means for me to fall in love with the world. It takes on many aspects and it is a constantly changing of experience.

Most fundamental, it has involved my sense of touch. It has meant for me to become aware of how I was aware of what I was touching. It was an open awareness and an awakening of how I was aware of what my body experienced. I noticed how I felt when I sat down from a standing position, I paid attention to what it felt like to breathe, I deliberately touched things and people and noticed how I sensed their presence. Many sensory experiences became an open door to feel the presence of the world. My sense of touch became my opening to the world around me.

Being open in this way caused me to lose a sense of self. I became connected in a way that dissolved my protective carapace. I moved outside my protective, defining sense of self. I felt the deep connection with whatever or whomever I was touching. In an instant, my “world” became less defined and unbelievably expansive.

By becoming open, I have learned what it means to experience the “darkness of each endless fall.” My openness often loses its own definition and I have an sense of limitless space and an immense realm of emptiness. I become open because of a body sensation like breath or touch.

For me, this becoming open is a decision. I know I have agency. I become open deliberately. If this is free will, then I embrace it.

My deciding to be open is more of a decision to remove barriers that keep me from being open. It is almost a natural response, and it is an experience of great joy. By being open, I do what brings me joy. I fall in love with many people and with all sorts of things. It is not adequate to consider how many people I have fallen in love with. Falling in love, being in love has become more a state of existence for me. I routinely sweep many aspects of the world into my loving open arms., into my open presence.

I am grateful for every additional day I wakeup to. Each day, I am learning more and more how to become even more open. I understand it in new and different ways with each open experience. I reflect on my experience, I learn, and I open some more.

It has taken me a long time to recognize just how white I am. My actual skin color hasn’t changed much, except for occasionally showing the effects of gardening without adequate sun protection. My attitudes and spontaneous reactions tell me more about how white I am. I didn’t decide to be white. It came from being born of a white family lineage in a very white southern society. Now I get to decide just how white I want to be.

Being white in my culture is not just about how I react to traditional racial issues. Being white is also about how I act and react in my whole community. It’s not only about how I regard those whose skin tone is different from mine. I recognize how white some of my pale companions are because I am beginning to recognize just how white I am.

I instinctively respond to situations with an attitude that I know what is right. I often know the right solution to a problem. At leasst, I know the direction that is better. For me it is an attitude of white privilege, of knowing what is right and true better than others. I assert my whiteness when I think I am aware better than others or know the correctness better than others. That includes better than other people who look as white as I am.

I see whiteness in others who are close to me whenever they assert how right they are. I find myself in conflicts of whiteness. It is a contest of who can assert their whiteness. I am asserting my right of privilege, my whiteness whenever I claim that I know better than others. I feel white when I allow myself to feel attached to what I see is the correct or better approach.

It is this attachment to what I see as true or correct that reminds me that I am asserting my white privilege. I recognize it in my resistance to listen to an opinion that is different fron mine. I see it when I am evaluating an opinion to see if I agree. I recognize it when I feel that someone is trying to control a situation to conform to their notion of what is true or correct. Any time I participate in a disruption of the feeling of togetherness, I am being white. I am being white when I lose the feeling of community. I am being white the more I see companions as other.

I am slowly emerging from a feeling of wanting things to be right and true because I know what right and true means. I am slowly emerging from being managed by my being white.