Why ‘I Didn’t Have Time’ Is Almost Never a Valid Excuse
A lesson from my autistic son
Diego, my 27-year-old autistic son, is the only person I know who never uses “I didn’t have time” as an excuse, rationalization, or explanation for what he does or does not do. Come to think of it, I’ve never even heard him say, “I’m so busy,” like the rest of us do way too often, half complaining, half showing off.
Somehow, Diego understands time differently than the rest of us mortals. I’d say he understands it better, as a weird dimension that’s relative in some ways and absolute in others.
All Time Is Not Felt Equally
I’m often bewildered by how Diego experiences time. He can wait while doing nothing longer than anyone I know. He takes his meds at 7:00 PM. (It has to be 7:00 PM unless a valid exception has been stated beforehand.) Sometimes, he will stand there and look at the oven clock for 20 minutes until it gets to 7:00.
To him, those 20 minutes surely don’t feel the same way they’d feel to me if I were doing the same thing!
Even before Einstein, we humans understood that our sense of time is relative. One hour is 60 minutes for everyone, yet our experience of 60, 42, 20, 7.5 minutes — any amount of time for that matter — varies.
