Positive Deviance

When What Does Not Fit Opens a Way Forward

Not all deviance is failure. Not everything that departs from the ordinary is a deficiency. Not everything that first appears too much, too strange, too intense, or too different is simply a problem to be corrected. Sometimes it is precisely what does not fit that opens a path.

This does not mean that difference is always a gift. That would be too simple. It would also be unfair to those who have felt its cost in their own lives. A child who is laughed at does not experience his difference as a gift. A teenager who must put on a clown’s mask in order to be accepted does not necessarily experience that mask as freedom. An adult who carries the masks of work, parenthood, competence, and responsibility until the body finally says enough does not experience vulnerability as something romantic.

And yet there is another side.

The very trait that makes life difficult in one setting may become a strength in another. The same person who struggles to find the rhythm of the classroom may later find the rhythm of the written word. The one who seems too intense in casual conversation may become persistent in research. The one who does not always understand the unwritten rules may develop a sharp eye for the rules themselves. The one who has stood outside may develop a deeper sensitivity to what exclusion feels like. The one who had to learn normality from the outside may become especially attentive to its invisible power.

In this way, deviance can become positive.

Not because suffering was good. Not because humiliation was necessary. Not because shame was useful. But because a human being, in the midst of these experiences, may develop capacities, insights, and forms of endurance that later prove meaningful. A wound cannot simply be called a gift. Yet around a wound a particular kind of knowledge can grow.

There are people who see what others do not see precisely because they do not see as others do. They enter the room at a slight angle. They hear different notes. They notice disruptions, patterns, details, and unspoken expectations. They may be slow in one form of social understanding and remarkably perceptive in another. They may become exhausted by what is fast and ambiguous, yet strong in what is slow and precise. They may struggle with spontaneity, yet excel in thoughtful reflection.

For a person on the autism spectrum, this can be a decisive insight. The question is not only: What is difficult? The question is also: Where can difficulty find a form? Where can intensity become useful? Where can the need for order become method? Where can endurance become work? Where can a slow and painstaking way of understanding become wisdom?

A human being needs a place where uniqueness is not immediately translated into error.

That place may be a family. A friendship. A workshop. A forest. A library. A lecture hall. A desk. A professional community. A place where what was too much in one setting becomes exactly what is needed in another.

For me, academia became such a place.

It was not a perfect place. No place is. Academia has its own masks, its own competition, its own anxieties, and its own unwritten rules. Yet there was something there that fit better. It was acceptable to read extensively. It was acceptable to ask questions for a long time. It was acceptable to rethink. It was acceptable to immerse oneself in language, concepts, theories, experiences, and human lives. It was acceptable to stay with a text until it finally found its form.

There, what had once seemed strange could become intellectual seriousness. There, intensity could find direction. There, endurance could become research. There, the power to write could become work. There, the refusal to leave a task unfinished could become an academic strength.

I do not stop until the task is finished.

This is not merely a personality trait. It is a way of life. It can be exhausting. It can be costly. It can make rest difficult. Yet it can also carry a person a long way. Without this persistence, I would never have come so far in academic life. Without the ability to remain with a question, to read further, rewrite, begin again, search for patterns, seek precision, and refuse to let go until a thought finally holds together, much would never have come into being.

Positive deviance does not mean that everything is easy.

It means that something can be used.

Yet a human being does not live only in academia. One also lives in the worlds of love and family. And here I must say something equally important. Without my peculiarities, I would never have come so far in life. Not only professionally, but humanly.

I have been married for more than fifty years. I have children who are now adults with families of their own. I have four grandchildren. I am proud of my family. Deeply proud. We have remained together through good times and difficult times, without knowing that a congenital neurological condition was part of the picture.

That is not a small thing.

When I look back, I do not see only shame. I also see love. I do not see only masks. I also see loyalty. I do not see only what was difficult. I also see that we stayed. That we continued. That we held together. That life did not become merely a story of exclusion, but also a story of belonging.

It is easy to think that autism is primarily about deficits: deficits in social understanding, flexibility, communication, or empathy. Sometimes the language of diagnosis sounds this way. But it is a poor language if it is allowed to stand alone.

I have known empathy, in my own way.

I have known closeness and love, in my own way.

I can express feelings, in my own way.

I can communicate, in my own way.

Those words matter: in my own way.

They are not an excuse. Nor are they a demand that everything I do should automatically be understood as right. They are a reminder that human life does not exist in only one form. Empathy can be expressed differently. Love can have different languages. Closeness can move in different rhythms. Care can reveal itself through practical responsibility, endurance, concern, loyalty, problem-solving, presence, work, writing, action, or through a quiet desire that another person should flourish.

Some people express love easily in their faces. Others express it through doing what needs to be done. Some find words quickly. Others find them later, perhaps first in writing. Some show empathy through immediate emotional resonance. Others show it by thinking carefully about another person's situation, searching for fairness, trying to understand, and acting when understanding finally arrives.

This does not mean that every expression is equally effective in every situation. Love that cannot be felt by the other person can become lonely. Empathy that is never communicated can be misunderstood. Feelings that remain inside can create distance. Therefore there is responsibility here as well. To say “in my own way” does not free us from learning the ways of others. But it opens a gentler and more truthful language. It says: There was love, even when it did not always find the right form.

Perhaps this is one of the most important tasks of a life on the spectrum: to find the meeting point between one’s own way and the needs of others. Not to erase one’s own nature. Not to demand that others simply understand. But neither to accept that one’s own way is merely wrong. The good life must be found in the meeting between them. Between my way and yours. Between the need for calm and the need for closeness. Between directness and sensitivity. Between persistence and rest. Between intensity and gentleness.

A marriage lasting more than fifty years is not simply romance. It is work. It is forgiveness. It is misunderstanding and new attempts. It is days of success and days of failure. It is responsibility, effort, joy, anxiety, laughter, silence, illness, family, ordinary days, children, finances, old age, and memory. It is enduring one another, but also being sustained by one another.

To remain together through thick and thin is not a small achievement. It is an art of living.

When I say that I am proud of my family, it is not only about the result. It is about having been a community through imperfection. We did not know everything. We did not have all the words. We did not always understand what was happening. Yet we remained connected. There was love there. Not always easy love. Not always clearly communicated love. But love nonetheless.

Positive deviance, then, is not only about academic achievement. It is also about the possibility that a human being can live, love, work, be a father, a husband, a grandfather, a teacher, a researcher, a writer, and a fellow human being—in his own way. Not flawlessly. Not without wounds. Not without responsibility. But genuinely.

This matters after writing about shame. Shame tends to make life one-sided. It points to what went wrong. It points to the wounds. It points to the failures. It says: This is the truth.

But shame lies when it claims to be the whole truth.

There is more.

There are children who grew up. There are adult children with families of their own. There are grandchildren. There is a marriage that has lasted more than fifty years. There is work that was done. Students who were taught. Texts that were written. People who were met. Lives that were touched. Thoughts that were shaped. Conversations that continue.

All of this must also become part of self-understanding.

Not as self-praise. Not as a defense against guilt. Not as a way of escaping responsibility. But as justice. A human being should not be judged solely by his weakest moments. Nor should he be understood only through diagnoses, shame, or mistakes. A human life deserves to be read more broadly.

Perhaps this, too, is a form of practical philosophy: learning to see one’s life truthfully enough that both failures and fruits have a place.

In Christian tradition there is a saying: “By their fruits you shall know them.” This can be misused harshly, as though a person should be measured only by success. But it can also be understood more gently. What has life brought forth despite everything? What relationships remain? What work was done? What people were loved? What attempts were made to take responsibility? What traces were left behind?

Then the picture becomes more complex.

The little boy with the dunce cap is still there. The teenager with the clown mask is still there. The adult carrying stress and Ménière’s disease is still there. The patient being explained by others is still there. The older man with an ASC diagnosis is still there.

But so is the spouse. So are the children. So are the grandchildren. So are the students. So are the books. So are the lectures. So is the writing. So is the philosophy. So is the long determination to understand.

Positive deviance is not an idealized portrait.

It is a portrait of a life.

It does not say: Everything was good.

It says: Something became good nonetheless.

It does not say: Difference was easy.

It says: Difference also bore fruit.

It does not say: Vulnerability disappeared.

It says: Vulnerability could become attentiveness, insight, and endurance.

It does not say: The masks were unnecessary.

It says: Behind the masks was a human being who continued to seek connection.

It does not say: The diagnosis explains everything.

It says: The diagnosis helps me see that what I once thought was only wrong was also another way of being in the world.

Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of positive deviance: that a person should not be understood only by where he failed to fit in, but also by what he became when he found a room, a task, a family, a language, and a path.

When I look back now, I see more than I once did. I see the child who was not understood. I see the teenager who wore the clown mask. I see the adult who carried too much. I see the patient who had to change direction. I see the older man who found a new language. But I also see the family. The marriage. The children. The grandchildren. The students. The writing. The work. The endurance. The love—in my own way.

It is not a perfect life.

But it is a life.

And perhaps that is enough for this essay: to say that what was once called deviance did not only create shame. It also created a path. A difficult path. A costly path. Yet also a path that led to love, work, language, family, philosophy, and meaning.

That is not a small thing.

It is, perhaps, positive deviance.