These flowers remind me of something entirely different. What makes this bouquet so beautiful is the variety of individual plants that make it up. Yes, a dozen roses tell a story usually involving love, but a beautiful variety of flowers such as above shows us that diversity of life is where all the beauty resides.

Going off on a related tangent, streaming video makes it possible to go back in time to revisit all the great TV shows of the past. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am currently watching Northern Exposure, which ran from 1990 to 1995. With all these old classics now available again, I have discovered that the TV shows I rate as the best usually have a very diverse cast, and they all seem to get along so well. That is so different from what I see in my daily life.

Being a deaf Aspie, I have two strikes against me, at least as described by the “normal” world (of which there is no such thing). I am stuck between two worlds, and neither seem to be able to see me as I am. There is the deaf world and the hearing world, and there is the neurodiverse world and the neurotypical world. Since being a deaf Aspie makes me a 1 in 160,000 sort of thing is just a normal occurrence now. But that’s OK. I am finally comfortable with who I am and no longer feel obliged to fit into the mold of those who see me as a “strange bird”.