Q45 Why do you enjoy going out for walks so much?

My guess is that lots of people with autism like walking, and I wonder if you can work out why. “Because walking makes you feel good?” “Because it’s great being out in the open air?” Both these replies are true, of course, but for me the number one reason is that us people with autism love the greenness of nature. Now you might be thinking, “Oh, is that all?” However, our fondness for nature is, I think, a little bit different from everyone else’s. I’m guessing that what touches you in nature is the beauty of the trees and the flowers and things. But to us people with special needs, nature is as important as our own lives. The reason is that when we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies get recharged. However often we’re ignored and pushed away by other people, nature will always give us a good big hug, here inside our hearts.

The greenness of nature is the lives of plants and trees. Green is life. And that’s the reason we love to go out for walks.

Q46 Do you enjoy your free time?

So what do youdo in your free time? Because for people with autism, free time is in fact un-free time. “You can do whatever you feel like doing now,” someone might tell us. But actually, it’s pretty hard for us to find something we do feel like doing, not just like that. If we happen to see some toys or books we’re always playing with or reading, then sure, we’ll pick them up. Thing is, however, that’s not so much what we wantto do as something we cando. Playing with familiar items is comforting because we already know what to do with them, so then, of course, people watching us assume, Aha, so that’s what he likes to do in his free time … What I really want to do, however, is to get stuck in some difficult book or to debate some issue or other.

We are misunderstood, and we’d give anything if only we could be understood properly. People with autism would be suffering breakdowns over this—all the time—if we weren’t holding ourselves in so tightly. Please, understand what we really are, and what we’re going through.

Q47 Would you give us an example of something people with autism really enjoy?

We do take pleasure in one thing that you probably won’t be able to guess. Namely, making friends with nature. The reason we aren’t much good at people skills is that we think too much about what sort of impression we’re making on the other person, or how we should be responding to this or that. But nature is always there at hand to wrap us up, gently: glowing, swaying, bubbling, rustling.

Just by looking at nature, I feel as if I’m being swallowed up into it, and in that moment I get the sensation that my body’s now a speck, a speck from long before I was born, a speck that is melting into nature herself. This sensation is so amazing that I forget that I’m a human being, and one with special needs to boot.

Nature calms me down when I’m furious, and laughs with me when I’m happy. You might think that it’s not possible that nature could be a friend, not really. But human beings are part of the animal kingdom too, and perhaps us people with autism still have some leftover awareness of this, buried somewhere deep down. I’ll always cherish the part of me that thinks of nature as a friend.

The Great Statue of Buddha

When you’ve been on a trip somewhere, have you ever watched someone burst into tears for no obvious reason? Of course there isa reason for it, really, it’s just that the person who’s crying isn’t able to tell you what the reason is. For all you know, the person might be crying for joy, but that might not even occur to you.

Well, it’s much the same for me. The other day I was visiting a town called Kamakura, where there’s this huge statue of Buddha. And when I saw it, I was so deeply moved that I started welling up. It wasn’t just Buddha’s majesty and dignity, it was the sheer weight of history and generations of people’s hopes, prayers and thoughts that broke over me, and I couldn’t stop myself crying. It was as if Buddha himself was saying to me, “All human beings have their hardships to bear, so never swerve away from the path you’re on.”

Everybody has a heart that can be touched by something. Crying isn’t necessarily about sadness or meltdowns or being upset. I’d like you to bear that in mind, if you would.

Q48 Why are you always running off somewhere?

My mind is forever swaying, this way and that. It’s not that I want to go running off, I just can’t help dashing away to whatever place enters my line of sight. It’s really annoying for me too, because people are always telling me off about it. But I don’t know how to stop it.

So I’m not doing all this moving around because it pleases me—it isn’t even all that calming. It’s like being teleported from one place to another without knowing it’s happening. Even if someone tries to prevent me, or if something else gets in the way, it happens anyway. I sort of lose myself for a little while.

So what’s my master plan to fix this problem? I’m constantly battling this impulse to run off and, compared to how it used to be, I’m slowly getting better at controlling it, I think. But I haven’t found a really effective way to fix this problem yet. Jogging and walking refresh my body, at least, and once refreshed, I kind of feel back home inside myself. My sense of gravity is restored, too, and that calms me down.

Q49 Why do you get lost so often?

I’ve already mentioned how I dash off as soon as I spot anything interesting. There’s a different reason for why we get lost so often, however, and I think it’s this: we don’t really know where we ought to be. You could tell us that we ought to follow someone else, or hold their hand, but the fact is that, with or without your suggestion, we’re still going to lose our way.

Simply put, people with autism never, ever feel at ease, wherever we are. Because of this, we wander off—or run away—in search of some location where we dofeel at ease. While we’re on this search, it doesn’t occur to us to consider how or where we’re going to end up. We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world. Then eventually we get lost, and have to be escorted back to the place we were at, or the person we were with, before.

But our uneasy, unsettled feeling doesn’t go away. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to reach our Shangri-La, however. I know it exists only in the depths of the forest or at the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Q50 Why do you wander off from home?

Once, when I was a little kid at kindergarten, I wandered off from home and had to be picked up by the police. Back then, in fact, I used to leave home quite regularly and, as I look back from this distance, I can think of several reasons why I did it. It wasn’t because I wanted to go out for a specific purpose, like wanting fresh air. It was because—this is hard to put into words—my body moved because it was lured outside by something there.

As I was walking farther from home, I didn’t feel any fear or anxiety. It came down to this: if I didn’t go outside, then I would cease to exist. Why? I can’t say, but I hadto keep walking, on and on and on. Turning back was not permitted, because roads never come to an end. Roads speak to us people with autism, and invite us onward. There’s not much logic in any of this, I know. Until someone brings us back home, we don’t know what we’ve done, and then we’re as shocked as anyone.