I want to have a real discussion today. A difficult one. I want to talk about how I have failed.
I have failed at showing others, especially when I was younger, that I could always be level-headed and think of them first. I have failed to pay back money that I owed. I have failed to be a good friend when others needed something from me I could not provide especially if could never admit it.
I have failed to protect my own children from the worst parts of the modern world. From the pressure of social media that amplifies the need to fit in a hundred million times over. From the loss of a childhood where you could just walk to a friend’s house and see if they could play.
I have failed on the road. I have cut people off in traffic and gotten angry when the hundredth small disrespect of the day made me feel like I didn’t matter. And so, I reacted, instead of responding with the understanding and kindness that every person deserves.
And for years, those failures lived in my head, rent-free. My autism would scream at me, replaying every mistake, every angry word, every disappointed face. I was haunted by the ghosts of my own making.
My lack of capacity, my own disability that I didn’t even know I had for fifty years, may sound like a joke to some. A convenient excuse. But this is not an excuse. It is an explanation. And it is an apology.
I am truly, and with the full weight of my integrity, sorry for all I have done that has negatively affected any of your lives.
This is not about begging for forgiveness. It is about ownership.
It is about showing that we each have a responsibility for our own actions, for the ripples we send out into the world. And that the hard, necessary, and liberating work of becoming a better human being begins in one place, and one place only.
It begins right there, in that dirty mirror, with the courageous and terrifying decision to finally start cleaning it, so you can see the profound beauty that has been hiding underneath the grime all along.