One of the things I’ve learned as the parent of a child on the autism spectrum is the general rule of the autistic world: if you meet a person on the spectrum, you’ve met a person on the spectrum. 

What this intends to convey is that no two people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are the same. 

Far too often, I’ve had to correct people who’ve heard my son is on the spectrum and then made assumptions about what that means for his approach to the world. 

With each orbit the earth takes around the sun, I see this approach increase on a macro level, especially in America. We tend to paint people with a broad brush, assuming we know everything about them based on one or two details we know about their lives in relation to class, voting, nationality, race, etc.

In reality, if we’ve met a person on whatever spectrum from which we are making an assumption, we’ve met that one person.

Now, I recognize there are collective realities about groups of people in some of those categories I’ve listed above. I get that having a working knowledge of the anthropology of people groups, cultures, and tendencies is a helpful aid in understanding the world. I’m not denying that fact. 

What I am saying is that just because a person fits into a certain category does not mean they can be painted with a broad brush onto the big canvas through which we see the world. 

Such painting with broad brushes is what keeps us from listening, empathizing, and understanding one another. It further divides us in ways that cause more pain, grief, and discord in our world that needs less and less of that which each passing day.

The truth is that we all live on spectrums of all types. No one person can be relegated to a pre-painted canvas and no one person is a reproduced copy of another masterpiece. 

As we continue forward into the year ahead, I hope that we’ll all find ways to make our brushes smaller and our brushstrokes of understanding swirler with the intentionality of a master painter who paints love into every corner of the shared canvas on which we gloriously live.