Our Challenges Are Our Gifts

This morning on The Infinite Mind Radio about having Asperger's Syndrome, Howard Bloom did a commentary expanding the concept of what it means to have a disability. He looked at it from an evolutionary perspective. We humans were given precious few gifts for survival, no fur, no fangs or claws. How to stay warm, how to eat meat, how to find shelter? These were all the problems that out ancestors solved while living on the edges of the Ice Age with very little room for mistakes. They rose to the challenge, overcame their disabilities, developed tools, fashioned warm clothes, feasted on what they hunted, and built portable housing. You might say that the need to solve these original disabilities made us human. Beethovan was deaf, Ray Charles was blind and many others throughout history have shown that solving the problems of their uniqueness graces all of us. Howard Bloom was given the ability to see visions of larger worlds as he devoured 2 books a day. He recommends giving up the illusion of normalcy and rather celebrate our abilities to be unique and accept each other's gifts as our evolutionary path.