Flapping our fingers and hands in front of our faces allows the light to enter our eyes in a pleasant, filtered fashion. Light that reaches us like this feels soft and gentle, like moonlight. But 'unfiltered' direct light sort of 'needles' its way into the eyeballs of people with autism in sharp straight lines, so we see too many points of light. This actually makes our eyes hurt.
This said, we couldn't get by without light. Light wipes away our tears, and when we're bathed in light, we're happy. Perhaps we just love how its particles pour down on us. Light particles somehow console us. I admit this is something I can't quite explain using logic.
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, Q37 p102 (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida
