The incomprehensible happiness
Individuals with higher self-perceived happiness live longer, get sick less often and are more productive.
Writes the School of Economics on its website.
Remember a question column with a fun guru who would answer various things. "What is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?" and the answer was, freely from memory: "The pessimist tends to see life more realistically, but the optimist is happier and lives longer".
But there was another thing that sped up my thoughts. Found an old one interview with professor Mikael Dahlen, on the blog Aspergermanualerna. It is ten years old and of course I do not know if everything in it is correct, if Dahlen himself considers himself to have such a functional variation that the page focuses on (High functioning autism) or not.
“I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere I've been. I haven't found my place yet, maybe it's on Mars.”
But it made me think about my impressions of people with Aspergers/High-functioning autism, both at work and privately.
My experience is that the simple, uncomplicated feeling of happiness, the zest for life, the "forward drive", is often something enigmatic for people with autism. Although certainly not for everyone. “What makes people want to live?” So, not that you need to be suicidal (although it can sometimes sound that way), but that it is precisely difficult to understand.
But, on the other hand, how many have become researchers, devotees, experts, in an area that has rubbed off, that was not so easy for them. Something that is invisible to the majority, maybe taken for granted.