Relentlessly Honest (SIM #78)

I celebrated my 50th birthday last August and my wife arranged for an incredible gift, having friends and family from throughout my life send video messages. Now, whenever life gets on the edge of overwhelming, I have a quickly accessible reminder at my fingertips to find my center. I've referenced in the past that I've often felt like an imposter, particularly early in my professional career. As I reflect, this insecurity was also true to varying degrees in almost all bigger group social settings. 

I absolutely love one-on-one or small-group conversations and with my curious nature, as long as it's not trivial small talk, I usually jump right in. A comment my daughter recently made hits upon this, “did you have to pass along to me your lack of patience with small talk?” I've always chalked this up to being an introvert. And while that's likely true, this 51st year has brought me a twist.

To share something highly personal that only a few (very few) of you are aware of, I'm now, at the age of 50, discovering that I'm likely on the autism spectrum. I've never actually written that before; it feels a bit odd.

As I explore this new revelation – let’s call it a semi-professional diagnosis that’s hard to refute – I’m mostly finding it a positive, particularly with respect to understanding why I have many of the tendencies and habits that I do. I can picture a number of you nodding your heads as you think about this, although for those less familiar with the current definitions of neurodivergence, it might be a surprise. With this new perspective, I’m trying to lean into the positives of understanding where my autism is most present and also challenging myself to not use it as an excuse for being anti-social. I’ve always had some sympathy for my wife, who puts up with my idiosyncrasies and that’s only increased now that I’m starting to better understand how some things I think of as normal, just aren’t.  

I initially struggled with the diagnosis, mostly because I was relating to the characteristics and behaviors, but not the experiences articulated, within the autism-related (ASD) content I was finding in books and online. Perhaps my unusual childhood and what I’ve now determined is a remarkable amount of adaptability to my surroundings created an almost frictionless environment for me to navigate social norms and meet the standard definitions of progress and achievement. Overall, I feel mostly the same as before the diagnosis. If nothing else, I feel empowered with a little more confidence that my perspective, which is often less accepting of “normal”, comes from a natural place. 

One of my colleagues recently paid me a compliment publicly that I believe is attributable to what I assume is my neurodivergence. It’s near the top of the list for compliments that have resonated with me. He referred to me as relentlessly honest (Relentlessly Honest Quote). Although I can think of many white lies or insincere affirmations over the years because of my desire for peacekeeping and disdain for drama, by and large, I aspire to live up to this compliment. And completely unrelated, I’m now picturing my father arguing that the greatest compliment I ever received was being called deceptively fast in a local newspaper when I was in high school.

My writing has a consistent theme with respect to intellectual honesty and empathy for the human condition and a disdain for promotion, BS and power structures that erode trust. I think I now know where this comes from.

Josh