“A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.”

 “ As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed…” Psalm 103:13-14a

When I received my diagnosis of autism in September 2023, I remembered Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is an inventor,  animal rights activist, and author. Grandin has autism. I remembered reading about the way her brain processes information. She does not hear a word and think of the definition. Instead, she hears a word and her brain represents that word or concept with a picture. I can relate to this. 

Part of the reason it takes me so long to process new information is because my brain also has to turn every word or concept into a picture. It is like using an interpreter to understand a foreign language. My brain needs some lag time to formulate a picture interpretation of what was said. 

This also happens when I read. For example, I might read, “The house was located on the corner of 5th and Chestnut.” My brain would see an image of a house, an image of a corner and an image of an intersecting street sign - three individual pictures that would need to mesh into one picture of a house located on a street corner. I would then have to keep this picture in mind to build it into the concept of the next sentence. It might only take a microsecond to formulate that concept but it is not an automatic, intuitive reflex. It takes conscious thought. 

Also, I think associatively instead of linearly. I associate whatever is said with something that sounds similar to me. The conclusions I reach might seem “out of left field” to some people but to me the “dots connect” just fine.

As an associative thinker, I relate well to analogies, similes, parables, metaphors, and allegories. It is easy for me to formulate a conceptual picture. For example, in the Bible verse above, it is easy for me to visualize the concept of a dad consoling a distraught child. This allows me to easily make the corresponding spiritual association. 

You will notice I often use idioms, such as the two I used above (connecting the dots, out of left field, etc). This is my way of trying to convey my exact meaning.. sometimes it feels like a “stab in the dark” or “grasping at straws” to explain myself. A picture is worth a thousand words. When I make the right association, this can save time explaining. Other times, it takes a thousand words to create the conceptual picture. If that ever happens when we are conversing, just know that am not “beating around the bush” intentionally and you will probably “catch my drift” before I am done talking.