Language

A big glaring example of the ways in which my brain has suffered is in the way I speak. And think! All absolutes and no degree of separation between the extremes. Which usually means, swearing - and a lot of it!

Natural Language Processing is my area of expertise in AI. I love the way we can express ourselves any which way and end up making sense to others. My dad was my first example for observing language in life. He was a fuzzy speaker. His instructions usually went like this:"Get me that thing I kept somewhere in that room a few days ago!". I never stopped being bewildered, then irritated with his communication style. But my mom, who lived very happily with him, always got whatever it was he was trying to convey. My stated goal, as in my statement of purpose to Cornell's NLP Team, was to tackle statements like his and make a HMI understand and react correctly. NLP is mainstream now but like all AI, we have strategies that deal with a specific problem, but not really 'How'. Deep Learning in all these Human Machine Interfaces are even more of a black box than the specific solutions themselves. And yet, "the only way to understand the mind is to build it", according to Lex Fridman! Even if I settle for a less bombastic goal of understanding how I alone work, mind, brain, emotions altogether, I am completely overreaching my abilities.

Sickness, anything less than an accepted normal is difficult! Why do we all want to have two eyes, two ears, one nose, two hands, 10 fingers, toes etc as the ideal? Because anything different is difficult. A few years ago, a couple of my friends from Germany and I were discussing the possibility of having a gay child. My son already was special needs and back then I was just learning to live with it. The mere idea of anything else, including the future sexuality of my toddler, being out-of-the-norm, disturbed me. I naturally want the path of least resistance for my child. Anything different implies struggle. Upon reflection, I very magnanimously told myself that I will accept her if that happens. So very broadminded of me, I thought! It didn't occur to me that it wasn't my choice to make! Now, a few years down the lane, I see people judging me as deficient because of problems physical and psychological and I hurt!

It didn't occur to me that it wasn't my choice to make!

Hurt, but I see the parallels in the topic. When living in a world built for the average normal- read, ordinary - the extraordinary gets left out. My son is extraordinary, not less than ordinary! As am I! We need not aim to all be extraordinary this way, because who wants inherent difficulties? And yet, if this is me, I will accept me and not seek acknowledgement that it is difficult to be different. Disregarding the extraneous is a large part of minimizing my challenges. Depression is a very real consequence of difficulty and the only way I can handle it is by defining a high enough threshold to life. People, big and small, if defined as important, can define me as small enough to suit their definition. That stops now.

I read this huff post article this week about Stephen Hawking and ableism. Although I agree in principle, in practice, it is never reasonable to expect the world to be logical. It never will be. The only action course left is to keep going as you are.

...it is never reasonable to expect the world to be logical. It never will be!

Back to language, I hate swearing and yet, when emotional, my impressive English vocabulary takes a huge step backwards and I end up speaking like I grew up two steps up a pigsty. If the words of someone else hurts me, I use their words back, regardless of any audience, in higher volume. The result is my feeling degraded in my own esteem. There is really no opinion that matters more than our own and each time I let another define what can hurt me and react accordingly, I set my standards to their own. My own standards are high, sometimes quite intimidatingly so. And I like that about myself. It saved my life! So now, I shall use my high standards to react. It is not easy. It is so far far from successful a strategy. But life is not easy.

There is really no opinion that matters more than our own!

Being alive is super enough and that must suffice! For now!