This month, April, has been Autism Awareness Month. The first time I encountered Autism was when I was about 18-years-old and I was visiting my brother in New York City. I saw a minivan pull up and drop off a child – the son of one of his neighbors. The child was crying and screaming hysterically as he walked into the house and I recall being told that the child had Autism. I immediately asked, ‘What’s Autism? ‘ They responded, ‘It’s a condition where the child’s soul has not been able to fully enter the body. ‘ I was obviously horrified by the thought.
Then at the age of 20, when I was the head counselor of a summer camp in Chicago, I met a camper who suffered from Autism. During that summer I became much better acquainted with this condition that afflicts one in every 88 children in the country.
My non-profit organization Youth Directions, just released a film about a young man, Zach Henry, who suffers from Autism-Asperger’s Syndrome. It chronicles the challenges he faced growing up, but it’s also a very hopeful and heartwarming story. Through purpose-finding coaching, Zach was able to find his purpose as an actor. This has positively changed his life significantly. Where before he often found himself deeply depressed, misunderstood, and spending weeks on end hidden away in his grandparents’ basement playing video games, he now has a hopeful outlook on life and is pursuing his purpose of being an actor.
A friend of mine who works with disadvantaged populations recently told me that he thinks disfunction and poverty have a very strong genetic component. Whereas I understand the frustrations of trying to help low-income, at-risk and underprivileged kids succeed — in all my years doing this work I have never seen it as a hopeless task. It is clear to me that everyone has something unique to contribute to the universe. It is by allowing a young person to discover what that is for them that gives them a pathway out of poverty, out of disfunction, and into a life of fulfillment and success.
Success should not be defined in the same way for everyone. What is success for one, may be failure for another, and vice versa. Real success is about whether you are fulfilling and succeeding at that which you were born to do.
I learned from Zach Henry that even innate challenges whether they are developmental disorders or as some others argue, a product of bad genetics can be overcome by finding and fulfilling your unique purpose in life. Young people can step beyond their challenges and reach for a much better life if they are able to discover within themselves their life’s purpose.
I can only imagine what an autism diagnosis means for a parent, or for the child who will carry this label for the rest of their life. As a parent of a child who has been diagnosed with Epilepsy, I know the horror any type of serious diagnosis brings when it relates to your child. Because everyone has something unique to contribute, often together with the diagnosis there are also opportunities. Zach Henry recently turned to his grandmother and said, ‘I’m happy that I have autism, because if I didn’t have Autism I wouldn’t be me. ‘
As we finish Autism Awareness Month, it is important that we become cognizant that everyone has something unique to contribute. And, what might be a deficit in one person’s eyes can be an asset for someones. We need to start looking at every child for the assets that they bring to world, rather than for the deficits that are but a figment of our own perception.