Things would be easier if we humans weren’t so mushy and gushy, right?
Well, maybe. It’s a bit of a “divide by zero” question.
The very same traits that make us so mushy and gushy have enabled us to get this far. Humans are incredibly good at heuristic processing, which, among many things, makes us much better than computers at telling the difference between dogs and fried chicken.
Cooperation has been essential for human survival. And we are more closely linked to one another than we might think, as research on nervous system co-regulation reveals.
Without heuristics, emotion, intuition, life wouldn’t be easier—it just wouldn’t exist.
But figuring out how to navigate the incredibly complex landscape of modern, well… everything can be challenging, especially for those of us who are neurodiverse.
In trying to understand others and be understood, it’s like we keep hitting syntax errors—except Stack Overflow can’t help us this time.
But we can help each other.
If your current methods are erroring out and you wish that life came with documentation, you’re not alone!
My hope with this project is to share some of the things that I’ve learned along the way and to help you set up your (career) development environment for success. 😊
An early and important step is to try and suss out these “divide by zero” problems, where you’re trying to compare yourself against a NULL.
These often sound like…
“If we could just keep emotion out of…”
“If things could just stop being so political…”
“If I could just be more productive…”
“If I were more like so-and-so…”
Why are these NULL comparisons?
Well, humans are inherently emotional. When emotion appears to be absent, that’s when it’s most important to keep track of.
Likewise, “politics” simply means “of the people”, and people in social contexts will behave in ways related to the social context. Understanding the social context and how you relate to it is invaluable.
And while there are some “productivity” gains to be had with clever energy management, you are not an automaton. You are a human. You cannot wish or will more hours into the day or more mitochondria into your cells. If you were capable of endless “productivity”, you would no longer be a living creature. You’d no longer be you. Which leads me to my last point…
You are yourself. You aren’t anyone else. You can’t be them, and they can’t be you.
Striving to be like another person is a divide by zero problem. It’s a null comparison. It does not compute.
Others can inspire, evoke, and awaken parts of us in beautiful ways. It can lead us to resonance and connection with others, which is part of what we might mean when we say we’re “like” someone, that we have a lot in common.
If you stopped spending energy on the impossible—getting rid of emotion, dismantling politics, being perfectly productive, emulating your idols—and instead focused on getting to know yourself, what might you uncover?
Who might you become?