There are moments in life that one does not expect; they simply arrive because it’s time to live them, whether perhaps by coincidence or because it is an experience that has been placed before oneself so that one learns something specific or gets to know oneself and takes time to be with oneself.
Each person takes and perceives what is presented to us in a different way, regardless of whether they are moments of happiness, joy, sadness, frustration, fear, or anguish. People will never act or perceive events in the same way, as every mind is a world, just as each individual’s feelings and way of reacting are also completely different.
The confinement situation experienced in recent months has led us to reflect on everything we are living now. The quarantine has represented a “Stop”, an indicator that has given us a “halt” in life, to realize that it is time to stop, sit down and think about what we can change for the world and for ourselves.
If we stop to think: people with autism live this every day. By this, I mean that they live in a daily quarantine. People with autism experience everything with greater intensity in all senses, having to adapt to our world. Likewise, people do not always understand them and do not stop to think about what each of them feels and why they think or react differently from us.
With all that we are experiencing, we have heard, seen, and read publications that tell us that people with autism have a ribbon on their hand to be able to go for a walk for a few minutes a day. Not even because of what we are experiencing now can they be respectful of this situation, and they have been criticized in different ways.
These wonderful people from whom we can learn every day tell us the following:
I am much more than a label: “I am authentic, unique, tenacious, incomparable, sincere, wonderful, and original.”
Just as they are more than a label, all of us are too, but why don’t we show our families, friends, country, the people around us, and the whole world that we are capable of being more tolerant, united, patient, loyal, supportive, and empathetic?
Thus, those of us who are undergoing a quarantine or have undergone it in recent months should begin to reflect that these types of decisions are made for the well-being of the world, of the people around us, and of ourselves. We cannot or should not go outside, but we can enter our own world to learn more and understand the reason for this situation and why it happened to each of us at another time and in other circumstances of life.
I hope these moments serve to make us more united and to respect people as they are, without the need for anyone to adapt to anyone else; rather, we adapt to the world.
Unity is strength; now and always the world needs us united!