You're a Miracle (and a Pain in the Ass): Embracing the Emotions, Habits, and Mystery That Make You You

by Mike McHargue

Your brain isn’t here to show you an honest picture of the world, or to make you happy. It’s not here to make rational decisions, or to help you advance up the corporate ladder. Your body spent the energy it takes to build something as powerful as your brain for one reason and one reason only: Your brain helps you survive on a planet that is often hostile to life.

IT’S SHOCKING TO learn you have autism when you are forty years old. It’s even more shocking if you are in the process of writing a book about self-knowledge and self-acceptance.

You aren’t broken either. You are here. You are alive. You have survived the challenges of life, and each part of you—even the parts you don’t like or appreciate—has played a role in your continued existence. There isn’t a piece of you that hasn’t been fearfully and wonderfully made, tested by the unforgiving process of natural selection.

In this way, “niceness,” which is to say, distancing ourselves from uncomfortable feelings, becomes a veneer that masks the cruel and inequitable foundation of our civilization.

There is a season for every kind of plant, and there is a season for every emotion our hearts can grow. Right now, I am in a season with a harvest of sadness, but I know that it will not always be this way. Besides, sadness isn’t such a bad crop after all.

I hope you learn to see the miracle, to claim your rightful place among wonders like supernovas and photosynthesis. But I also hope you understand that the things that drive you crazy about yourself are there to protect you, to help you, and to drive you toward the change you’ll need to make it through the next rough patch in your life.