One of the screener questions used in the pre autism diagnosis questionnaire is whether you’re a big picture or a small details person.
I have no idea how to answer that question.
As I’m sure I’ve written before (although I can’t put my cursor on where or when to link) when I was a systems programmer I held the entire system in my mind. To do that though, I had to take it apart to see how it fitted together. So I had to go down to details to follow the connections to know the system. Does that make me a small details or a big picture person? Or could it be that big pictures are made up of small details and the question is nonsensical and the fact that someone is asking it at all in a diagnostic sense just goes to show how little we all understand each others’ ways of thinking?
I know that not all autistic people are systems programmers. But I wonder if actually connections and relationships, between things, concepts, people, details and their systems that is the thing we all do?
(There’s probably research and articles on this. I haven’t looked. )
I can get lost in the details of a flower. A dewdrop. A spider’s web. Even a dust mote in light. I can sink into its beauty, its essence, the way it holds all the world in itself.
And is still just a dust mote.
‘To see the world in a grain of sand. ‘
That too.
Leave a Reply