Published: The Good Men Project (November 12, 2015)
I recently discovered some lyrics from a Beatles song that resonated so strongly with me that I needed to include them here.
Courtesy of “Eleanor Rigby”:
Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
In the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face
That she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
For a moment, I’d like to focus on the last three verses. When you are on the autism spectrum, you struggle to comprehend people’s facial expressions, body language, and other nonverbal forms of communication. Indeed, even when language is directly involved, those of us with Asperger’s Syndrome still find it difficult to both comprehend what is being conveyed to us and respond to that information correctly.
Although I’ve heard “Eleanor Rigby” several times, the deeper implications of its story didn’t sink in until now. When Paul McCartney wrote about “the face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” he was talking about her inability to both communicate and be understood by others. Because we use our faces to communicate to others, the fact that Rigby keeps her face “in a jar by the door” means that she can’t/won’t develop those connections. Similarly, because others aren’t able/willing to read any messages she may try to send it out, McCartney rhetorically asks why she should bother keeping her face at all – i.e., who is it for?
Just as “Eleanor Rigby” contains a great metaphor for living with autism, so too does it include the perfect lesson everyone can draw from our experiences.
All the lonely people,
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?
I can answer this question for some of the lonely people – i.e., they “come from” the mistreatment that is regularly heaped on non-neurotypicals by our society, largely because we have yet to widely accept that they don’t deserve it on some level. That said, this doesn’t apply to all of the lonely people, or for that matter even a majority of them. There are millions if not billions of us out there, and we all belong in the same place: With the rest of you.
Hence the lesson that I take away from “Eleanor Rigby.” The world is filled with lonely people, suffering in emotional or even physical solitude for reasons beyond their control, and their only hope is that others will take the time to learn about, empathize with, and ultimately make meaningful efforts to address their plight. This may be a message that applies superficially to Asperger’s Syndrome, but on a deeper level it pertains to everyone.
This is my musing of the day.