I'm an autistic moron: will you be my friend?

Hi guys, I'm going to talk about an issue that has bothered me this week because, well, I just can't get my head around it. I guess it is probably because I am autistic and fail at reading human emotions very well. There was an incident that I shall summarize like this: I tried to help an old friend in Singapore who was in financial difficulty but I had been way too blunt about the fact that I felt sorry for him. I had been poor before, being poor sucks. I won't go into detail here, but it shouldn't surprise you that there are people in Singapore who are struggling to make ends meet. I'm rich now, it's nice to have money to be able to live in a nice house, buy expensive clothes and go on fancy holidays several times a year. I made some assumptions despite the fact that he never once asked me for help. It misfired, he told me I was an autistic moron who had hurt his feelings so he got extremely offended. I apologized but it was too late - the damage had been done. You know, life is never straight forward: I may have been the stupid autistic moron who had hurt his feelings, but I do wonder if anyone else in his life had ever tried to make such a concerted effort to solve his financial problems by improving his work situation, to enable him to earn more money? I doubt it, because if there had been someone like me trying to help him, then well, he wouldn't be in this current situation. Enough about that for now, I am an autistic moron, guilty as charged. I'm going to explore the sensitive topic of trying to help our friends who don't and won't ask for help.

So come with me on a little trip to the local swimming pool and when we get there, we discover there isn't a lifeguard, what would you do if you saw a swimmer struggling in the deep end? Would you intervene if the person in question looked like a very weak swimmer who really shouldn't be in the deep end of the pool? At what point do you try to help - do you wait for the swimmer to call for help? Do you call out to the swimmer, "Hey, you there, are you okay? Do you need help?" What if the swimmer just ignores you when you call out? So do you wait till you think that swimmer is in danger of drowning before you intervene? Now what if we add the fact that the swimmer was a young girl of just 7 years old, would that influence your decision to help her or see if you could find her parents? Or what if it was an old lady of 77 years old, how would you feel then about rushing in to help her? I think for most of us, we would definitely rush in to intervene if we saw a young child struggling in the deep end of the pool because we simply wouldn't trust a young child - but if it was an adult, we may hesitate because the adult may not welcome the help at all, especially if they thought that they weren't in any kind of real danger and they could have been pushing themselves a little harder during what they considered normal swimming training. So where do we draw the line? Do we err on the side of caution because we don't want to embarrass the other party by offering help they don't really need? Or do we go ahead and offer the help anyway just to be safe? And would you rather cause offence and commit a social faux pas or would you stand there and watch someone drown?

Every cloud has its silver lining as they say. I have been extremely lucky in my life despite being autistic: there have been various angels in my life who have helped me so much along the way. I'm the kind of person who wouldn't ask for help because I am emotionally very immature. Due to my autism, my social skills were always several years behind my peers when I was growing up - it doesn't make a difference now I am an adult but gosh, life was extremely tough for me back then as a teenager with very poor social skills. My autistic parents simply didn't understand what all that meant and as long as my grades were good, they assumed everything was going fine at school. Even as a young child, my sisters could sense when there was something wrong with me, like if I got bullied at school, I wouldn't tell anyone because I thought it was my fault that I couldn't make friends or got picked on. But did my sisters wait till I asked for help before they intervened? No, they knew me well enough to know when I needed help and I am deeply indebted to them for the way they helped nurture me when I was a child. They understood that just because I didn't or couldn't ask them for help didn't mean that I was okay - far from it, of course I did accept their help, I am still extremely grateful for it up till today. 

When I was a teenager, there were two gymnastics coaches who could sense that I needed a safe place as a very damaged, vulnerable teenager who had problems at home. One was Mr Lee the former head of the Singapore Amateur Gymnastics Association (now known as Singapore Gymnastics) and Mr Foo, the head coach of the men's national team at that time. In hindsight, I wasn't the most talented male gymnast in Singapore during those years in the 1990s, but they were extremely kind to me in telling me that I always had a place to go to if I ever needed somewhere, short of giving me a set of keys to the gym, it meant so much to me to know that there was a safe place I could escape to when things got too difficult at home with my parents. Did I ever once tell my coaches that I constantly fought with my parents and wanted to run away from home? No, but they could sense that something was wrong - I wasn't like one of those normal teenagers from happy families, I was damaged goods, gosh I was so incredibly fucked up as a teenager then. I was seeking solace in gymnastics, trying to escape from the problems in at home and at school. Once again, help was offered by adults who understood what kind of mess I was in and felt that they had to intervene in a situation when the person involved didn't ask for help - once again, they had made the right judgement for which, I am eternally grateful. 

Then there's an incident I remember from my NS days. Like I have explained before, there is an endemic culture of bullying in the SAF and things were particularly bad in the 1990s. There was this case involving a soldier I didn't know particularly well, but he was in the same unit as myself for a while. Let's call him Kachang since he liked snacking on nuts. Kachang came across as a shy and quiet guy who minded his own business, but I could sensed that something wasn't quite right with him. It was only much later that I found out that not only was he being picked on by a number of officers he worked for, he also had a lot of problems at home with his family. So whether he was in camp or at home, there was no escape for him. But Kachang wasn't the kind of person who would ask for help, even when he needed help in camp - I remember once I noticed he had stayed in late to finish preparing something that needed to be done for an exercise the next day. I offered to help him finish the work so he could get to bed at a decent time, which he gratefully accepted. It was not like he asked me, some people would just accept that this must be their fate in life to suffer and never approach anyone for help. Perhaps some people who are very shy like Kachang just find it hard to ask for help.

Kachang was transferred to a different unit and then one day, I heard that he had committed suicide. It wasn't one thing or another, but he had a difficult day in camp and couldn't sleep that night. His bunk mates had heard him walking around in the middle of the night and the next thing they heard was this horrific loud sound - Kachang had jumped to his death. There was an investigation of course, but nobody could point to the one major incident that made him kill himself. It was more a case of 'death by a thousand paper cuts' - the insomnia that night was but the last straw that broke the camel's back. I was deeply saddened by what happened to Kachang as I felt partly responsible - I was one of the few people who had befriended him, who had realized that he was one of those people who just wouldn't ever ask for help even when he needed it and more importantly, would gladly accept it. There was a part of me that still feels a deep remorse when I thought about everything that happened - I was too selfish in only caring about my own problems in NS (believe you me, I had my share of problems) but if I could have done anything to save Kachang, then of course I would have gladly done whatever it took to save a life. They say NS makes you grow up, but you have to realize it is not the training or the military discipline that makes you grow up, it is this realization that you cannot be this selfish, self-indulgent brat only thinking about yourself that truly makes you grow up during NS. That's something most people don't really think about. 

Let's fast forward several years. When I first started out working in corporate finance, you have to realize I am a fish out of water here being a late starter in the industry - one really nice guy (let's call him Reggie, not his real name) was extremely helpful to me and went out of his way to help me. Sure Reggie and I were friends, but I think he realized how I was struggling because I didn't get a job in a prestigious investment bank straight out of university like him and instead, I hustled my way into the industry from nothing and clearly, I was at quite a disadvantage especially since I was a migrant from a working class family. He saw the fighting spirit in me, he wanted to see me succeed so without me asking him for help, he chose to help him. Did I ask Reggie for help? No, but it doesn't change the fact that once I accepted his help, I always expressed my gratitude to him. I wasn't too proud to accept his help even if I suppose I was too embarrassed to asked for his help in the first place, so now we're not just good friends but business associates who often help each other out. Now that I am finally quite good at my job, I have been able to return the favour and brought Reggie some very lucrative deals so his 'investment' in me had paid off. Things can work out just fine in the case of Reggie and myself and that's just one example - I have quite a few friends who have gone out of their way to help me in my career and my only response is gratitude every single time. But hey, I shouldn't assume that others will always react the way I react, right?

Allow me please to be the first to say that I didn't achieve everything I have achieved through my own sheer brilliance and hard work - hell no, there have been many angels along the way who have showered me with kindness, sympathy, pity and charity. I don't deserve the help I got but I was very lucky. As for this old friend whom I tried to help, well I don't think he's stupid or lazy, in fact he's quite intellectual. The first 18 years of our lives were remarkably similar: we were both working class kids who studied hard and went to all the right schools. Then somehow, our paths diverged a lot when we became working adults which led to him really struggling to make ends meet in his 40s today whilst, well, it would be unkind to compare. The only difference was that I probably got a lot more help than he did along the way from people like Reggie, so that was why I had been motivated by nothing but kindness to try to help others along the way - yet somehow, because of my autism, I am so blunt and clumsy with my words that I had caused huge offence in trying to help him. It does make me wonder if people in general would be willing to forgive an autistic friend who has genuinely good intentions, but can be somewhat tactless at times? It was pointed out to me that perhaps the best way for me to do charity perhaps is to make a direct donation to a charitable organisation rather than reach out to individuals, just give them a generous donation and I wouldn't have the responsibility of trying to explain why or how I was trying to help. 

So where do we draw the line when it comes to helping people in our lives who don't ask for help? I know I've told this story before a few times but I keep going back to it as it does illustrate a point. Years ago, when my cousin was in secondary school, she stunned us all when she refused to accept some money that was offered to students who came from low-income families. Her kind teacher knew how dire her family situation was and so she asked my cousin to fill in the form. There were no strings, all my cousin had to do was fill in the form and she would get some money given to help her with her studies as her family qualified under this scheme. However, my cousin got angry with the teacher as she was more afraid of the scorn she might encounter should her classmates found out how poor she was - so instead of accepting the money, she sat on the form until the deadline had passed despite the teacher's best effort to persuade her to just take the money. Maybe there was a culture of bullying in my cousin's school back then, I don't know - but the rest of us were still astonished that she would say no to what was effectively free money on the basis of pride and even resent her teacher's intervention. My cousin is the kind of person who would never ask for help and would rather solve her own problems, I suppose I do have a certain amount of respect for that kind of resilience because what I despise is the opposite: people who don't even try to help themselves and give up without even trying, who claim that everything is too difficult and expect handouts instead. Hence there are definitely some merits to my cousin's approach to life - as long as she doesn't end up like my friend Kachang. Somewhere between those two extremes, there is a healthy compromise. 

That's it from me on this topic, over to you: what do you think? When you do try to help a friend and when do you know you should leave them alone? Should we try to help people we know or should we play it safe and simply donate to charities, leaving that kind of work to the experts? What would you do if someone offered you help even though you didn't think about asking for help in the first place - would you be offended? Why do some people find it so hard to ask for help whilst others are always asking for help? Why are some poor people prioritizing their pride over cold hard cash? Would you hate an autistic friend who has kind intentions but can be utterly tactless at times? Do you have a friend like Kachang or even myself? Let me know what you think please and do leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.