so this is a picture of me as a young
Daniel growing up in the woods of
Minnesota and as a young Daniel there
was a lot of things I wanted out of life
I wanted every video game released for
the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
I wanted peppermint chocolate chip ice
cream with every meal
or instead of every meal that would be
okay too but most of all what I wanted
more than anything was a friend Mario
had Luigi I wanted someone to so I
hatched a plan there was a boy who rode
the bus home with me from elementary
school and he got off on my same stop
and so I decided that when we got off
the bus together I would invite him to
my house to play video games because who
could say no to video games foolproof
plan right so we get off the bus I put
my plan into action
he starts walking towards his house and
I start walking after him
and then something strange happens he
starts walking faster but I decide
that’s okay he’s probably just in a
hurry to get home so I start walking
faster too so I can catch up and then
something really weird happens he starts
running and I don’t know what’s going on
but I do know that I don’t want to let
my new friend get away and so I start
running too so I can catch up to him and
then finally I do and I catch up to him
and I’m so ready to invite him to my
house and start our new friendship when
he punches me in the stomach and he says
get away from me
and he turns and he leaves and I’m left
to walk home alone I wish I could tell
you that this was an unusual experience
for me I wish I could tell you that this
kid was just a jerk or maybe he was
having a bad day and the next time I
reached out in the friendship I was met
with open arms but the fact is this was
a pretty typical experience for me
growing up I don’t mean to say that
every time I tried to make a friend I
would get punched in the stomach but
sometimes they would kick me in the back
sometimes they would pretend to like me
so they could convince me to eat potato
chips that they had secretly spit on
sometimes they would just stand up and
walk away without a word and the hardest
part of all of this rejection is that I
thought I deserved it see I have a
diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome which
means that I’m on the autistics
and so I can look back at my childhood
and understand why it was so hard for me
to fit in I can understand why I
couldn’t read other people’s social cues
or adapt my behavior to fit social norms
but I wouldn’t be diagnosed until high
school and so was a kid I didn’t know
any of that I didn’t know that my brain
wasn’t wired to learn social skills
naturally or that there’s this whole
universe of body language and tone and
social nuance that I couldn’t see all I
knew is that I couldn’t get other people
to like me
no matter how hard I tried and when
you’re a kid you try to make sense of
the world the best way you can and the
only way that my kid brain could
understand my experiences of rejection
or to decide that they were my fault I
remember coming home from school running
into my dad’s arms and crying out I’m
bad I’m bad I’m bad and I believed it I
was seven years old and I believed that
I was bad because it was the only way I
could understand what was happening to
me what I wish I had known back then is
that I struggled to find a place to
belong not because I was bad but because
that struggle is just a part of the
human experience and that actually my
feelings of loneliness that made me feel
so different were things that I had in
common with a lot of other people and I
want to demonstrate that with a little
exercise that we’re all gonna do
together if that’s okay
what I’d like to do is say a couple of
things that are true of me some feelings
that I experienced that as a kid made me
feel really alone made me feel like I
was the only one that felt that way and
if you’ve ever felt that same way if
you’ve resonated with the experiences
that I share what I’d like you to do at
the end of the list is to raise your
hand so here we go here are some of the
things that I’ve experienced I have felt
like I don’t belong I have felt like
deep down I’m not like other people I
have felt like I’ve needed to hide part
of who I am to fit in I have felt afraid
that if other people really knew me they
would leave I have felt lonely even in a
group if anybody here
has resonated with those feelings if
anybody here has had that same
experience of any one of those things
could you raise your hand now thank you
for raising your hands that’s a lot of
people Wow
thank you guys I think what that tells
us is that these are pretty universal
experiences that there’s just part of
being human that means that we all want
a place to belong and people that were
connected with and there’s just part of
the human experience that means that
we’ve had pain when we don’t get that
very significant pain and that’s true
regardless of diagnosis and the moment
that I realized that the moment that I
realized my struggle for belonging was
not autistic but human everything began
to change because I started to see the
way forward it happened the first day of
my freshman year of high school to put
things in the context just before
starting freshman year my family had
moved from Minnesota to California so I
left behind everything that was familiar
to me and I had just been diagnosed with
Asperger’s syndrome so I knew that all
of the other kids at school would be
neurologically different from me not
just normal different this terrified me
my mom tells me that on the first day of
school she came to wake me up and she
found that I was covered in a cold sweat
because I’d been shivering the entire
night just afraid of the morning to come
but once again I had a plan except this
time my plan wasn’t to make a friend it
was about survival I was going to become
the Invisible Man I would be like one of
the secret agent Special Forces guys
from one of my video games sneaking
around behind enemy lines totally
undetected I was actually kind of
excited about this idea and at first it
worked out really well I sat in the back
of every class never raised my hand
never talk to anybody I made it all the
way to lunch without any human contact
but lunch presented a problem because at
lunch you sit at lunch tables and at
lunch tables are other people and I
needed to avoid the other people so that
was okay I was like a Navy SEAL
parachuted behind enemy lines adapt
improvise overcome don’t talk to anybody
yeah so I got my food and I went to my
next class thinking that I would just
eat it at my desk but then disaster
struck again
the door to the classroom was locked the
teacher out to lunch so adapt improvise
over camp overcome I sat on the floor my
first day of freshman year and I was
eating my lunch alone on the floor with
my back to the hallway wall trying very
hard not to be noticed and then I saw
something strange I saw that there was
another boy also sitting on the floor
with his back to the wall eating his
lunch alone and trying hard not to be
noticed and at that moment I had a
choice to make see the Invisible Man
strategy was working nobody had punched
me in the stomach yet that was a win and
if I reached out to that other boy I
might lose all of that he might make fun
of me he might call his friends over to
make fun of me he might decide that I
was bad but the thing that it stuck with
me all throughout my days the Invisible
Man the thing that I couldn’t get out of
my head as I just looked at this other
boy is that no matter how hard I tried
to be invisible what I wanted more than
anything was to be seen what I wanted so
desperately was for somebody to notice
my struggle sit down next to me and say
hey it’s tough to be new but I’ll be
your friend and we’ll get through this
together
and I realized that this other boy might
not be autistic but he probably was
still lonely still nervous still wishing
that somebody would see him and reach
out and I had the opportunity to be that
somebody so I stood up I walked over to
him and I said my name is Daniel and he
said my name is Bobby and there was a
long pause as we kind of sized each
other up and then he said do you like
video games and I knew at that moment
that I just made my first friend of high
school and not just my first friend but
my best friend this is a picture of the
two of us Bobby and I became inseparable
and what his friendship taught me is
that other people could be sources of
joy not just sources of pain and so I
switched my behavior to try to maximize
that joy and believe me joy is a far
better motivator than pain and in trying
to have more joyful connection I started
to reach out more I started to work on
my social skills I started
to make more friends people who cared
about me and loved me for who I was
even though who I was was still kind of
awkward but the problem is that love is
kind of like food you can work off of
reserves for a while but if you don’t
have a steady supply you’re going to get
into trouble and that’s what happened to
me a few years ago I moved here to
Oregon to start a graduate program in
clinical psychology and I left behind my
community the family and friends all of
the people who were filling my life with
a constant supply of love and after a
few failed attempts to make friends what
I found is that those old fears from
childhood started to gain new power they
started to creep back again and I
started to think maybe I don’t belong
maybe I don’t deserve to belong maybe I
really am bad all along and this became
self-fulfilling I stopped reaching out I
stopped going to social events my first
birthday in Oregon I spent alone in my
room eating a pizza bar myself because I
thought that if I invited people nobody
would come I had once again become the
Invisible Man
but this time somebody saw me one of my
classmates a man named Tyler noticed
that I was drifting through class never
connecting to anybody else and so he
decided to take a risk
one day he sat down next to me and he
said hey let’s get lunch and then lunch
turned to Friday nights playing video
games together because everything with
me is video games and then our video
game time turned into being workout
buddies and little by little collar
became my best friend it’s safe to say
that Kylie’s friendship rescued me you
can see a picture of our friendship
on my own I couldn’t shake my fears that
had kept me trapped I couldn’t believe
that I deserved a place to belong but
then I had another voice saying you do
belong you’re not bad
if you’re my friend I needed someone
else to speak that into my life I’m
reminded of an old Jewish parable called
the parable of the long spoons and it
says that heaven and hell are the exact
same place everybody’s seated or on a
big pot of delicious soup and everybody
has a really long spoon and in how
everyone is starving because they try to
feed themselves but they just can’t the
spoon is too big if the soup spills
every time but in heaven people have
realized something important they’ve
realized that their spoons are not for
feeding themselves they’re for feeding
someone else and so they feed each other
and are fed in return I used to think
that being autistic meant that there was
something wrong with my spoon that
everybody else could go out and get
their fill of love and connection and
belonging whenever they wanted but the
truth is I was wrong none of us have a
self-sufficient spoon all of us need
each other to create that place of
belonging and all of us deserve each
other to create that place of belonging
for us nobody is bad nobody is
disqualified and it’s never too late for
anybody to find that place and the cool
thing is we all have the ability to
create that place for someone else
just as Kylee reached out to me and I
reached out to Bobby you all have the
ability to reach out to somebody in your
life and that might sound like a small
thing but I want you to understand just
how monumental it actually is a
meta-analysis of a hundred and
forty-eight research studies covering
over three hundred thousand participants
found that greater social connection was
connected to a 50% reduced risk of
premature death 50% that’s equivalent to
the effect of quitting smoking and it’s
greater than the effect of exercise for
obesity on mortality if you discovered
that you had a 50% chance to heal any
disease just by touching somebody that
all you had to do was to reach out your
hand I guarantee you that every single
one of you would be jumping out of your
seats you’d be running to the nearest
hospital running into every single
saying everybody gets a high-five I want
to spread this healing as far as I can
if you had that incredible power of
healing you wouldn’t waste it and what I
want you to understand is that you do
have that kind of power not the power to
heal with the touch but the power to
heal with your friendship through the
simple decision to be a friend you could
help somebody else believe that they are
good you can give somebody the courage
to go through life knowing that they
don’t have to do it alone and in
someone’s darkest moment your love might
be the reason they choose life over
suicide that is the power of friendship
and that is a power that each and every
one of you have artistic neurotypical
social butterfly or total Wallflower it
doesn’t matter all of you have the
ability to sit down next to somebody and
invite them to lunch or to play video
games all of you have the ability to
call up somebody that you haven’t talked
to for a while just to check in all of
you have the ability to meet the deep
human need for connection and belonging
that somebody else has been caring and
maybe has been carrying for a long time
I am the man that I am today because of
the power of friendship because of
people who looked past my awkwardness
and saw my value because of the people
who gave me the courage to say that I am
not bad I am loved every single one of
you has that exact same power all of you
have the incredible mind-boggling
ability to change the course of
somebody’s life and your own through the
simple decision to be a friend
so put your spoon to work spread some
you [Applause]
Daniel growing up in the woods of
Minnesota and as a young Daniel there
was a lot of things I wanted out of life
I wanted every video game released for
the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
I wanted peppermint chocolate chip ice
cream with every meal
or instead of every meal that would be
okay too but most of all what I wanted
more than anything was a friend Mario
had Luigi I wanted someone to so I
hatched a plan there was a boy who rode
the bus home with me from elementary
school and he got off on my same stop
and so I decided that when we got off
the bus together I would invite him to
my house to play video games because who
could say no to video games foolproof
plan right so we get off the bus I put
my plan into action
he starts walking towards his house and
I start walking after him
and then something strange happens he
starts walking faster but I decide
that’s okay he’s probably just in a
hurry to get home so I start walking
faster too so I can catch up and then
something really weird happens he starts
running and I don’t know what’s going on
but I do know that I don’t want to let
my new friend get away and so I start
running too so I can catch up to him and
then finally I do and I catch up to him
and I’m so ready to invite him to my
house and start our new friendship when
he punches me in the stomach and he says
get away from me
and he turns and he leaves and I’m left
to walk home alone I wish I could tell
you that this was an unusual experience
for me I wish I could tell you that this
kid was just a jerk or maybe he was
having a bad day and the next time I
reached out in the friendship I was met
with open arms but the fact is this was
a pretty typical experience for me
growing up I don’t mean to say that
every time I tried to make a friend I
would get punched in the stomach but
sometimes they would kick me in the back
sometimes they would pretend to like me
so they could convince me to eat potato
chips that they had secretly spit on
sometimes they would just stand up and
walk away without a word and the hardest
part of all of this rejection is that I
thought I deserved it see I have a
diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome which
means that I’m on the autistics
and so I can look back at my childhood
and understand why it was so hard for me
to fit in I can understand why I
couldn’t read other people’s social cues
or adapt my behavior to fit social norms
but I wouldn’t be diagnosed until high
school and so was a kid I didn’t know
any of that I didn’t know that my brain
wasn’t wired to learn social skills
naturally or that there’s this whole
universe of body language and tone and
social nuance that I couldn’t see all I
knew is that I couldn’t get other people
to like me
no matter how hard I tried and when
you’re a kid you try to make sense of
the world the best way you can and the
only way that my kid brain could
understand my experiences of rejection
or to decide that they were my fault I
remember coming home from school running
into my dad’s arms and crying out I’m
bad I’m bad I’m bad and I believed it I
was seven years old and I believed that
I was bad because it was the only way I
could understand what was happening to
me what I wish I had known back then is
that I struggled to find a place to
belong not because I was bad but because
that struggle is just a part of the
human experience and that actually my
feelings of loneliness that made me feel
so different were things that I had in
common with a lot of other people and I
want to demonstrate that with a little
exercise that we’re all gonna do
together if that’s okay
what I’d like to do is say a couple of
things that are true of me some feelings
that I experienced that as a kid made me
feel really alone made me feel like I
was the only one that felt that way and
if you’ve ever felt that same way if
you’ve resonated with the experiences
that I share what I’d like you to do at
the end of the list is to raise your
hand so here we go here are some of the
things that I’ve experienced I have felt
like I don’t belong I have felt like
deep down I’m not like other people I
have felt like I’ve needed to hide part
of who I am to fit in I have felt afraid
that if other people really knew me they
would leave I have felt lonely even in a
group if anybody here
has resonated with those feelings if
anybody here has had that same
experience of any one of those things
could you raise your hand now thank you
for raising your hands that’s a lot of
people Wow
thank you guys I think what that tells
us is that these are pretty universal
experiences that there’s just part of
being human that means that we all want
a place to belong and people that were
connected with and there’s just part of
the human experience that means that
we’ve had pain when we don’t get that
very significant pain and that’s true
regardless of diagnosis and the moment
that I realized that the moment that I
realized my struggle for belonging was
not autistic but human everything began
to change because I started to see the
way forward it happened the first day of
my freshman year of high school to put
things in the context just before
starting freshman year my family had
moved from Minnesota to California so I
left behind everything that was familiar
to me and I had just been diagnosed with
Asperger’s syndrome so I knew that all
of the other kids at school would be
neurologically different from me not
just normal different this terrified me
my mom tells me that on the first day of
school she came to wake me up and she
found that I was covered in a cold sweat
because I’d been shivering the entire
night just afraid of the morning to come
but once again I had a plan except this
time my plan wasn’t to make a friend it
was about survival I was going to become
the Invisible Man I would be like one of
the secret agent Special Forces guys
from one of my video games sneaking
around behind enemy lines totally
undetected I was actually kind of
excited about this idea and at first it
worked out really well I sat in the back
of every class never raised my hand
never talk to anybody I made it all the
way to lunch without any human contact
but lunch presented a problem because at
lunch you sit at lunch tables and at
lunch tables are other people and I
needed to avoid the other people so that
was okay I was like a Navy SEAL
parachuted behind enemy lines adapt
improvise overcome don’t talk to anybody
yeah so I got my food and I went to my
next class thinking that I would just
eat it at my desk but then disaster
struck again
the door to the classroom was locked the
teacher out to lunch so adapt improvise
over camp overcome I sat on the floor my
first day of freshman year and I was
eating my lunch alone on the floor with
my back to the hallway wall trying very
hard not to be noticed and then I saw
something strange I saw that there was
another boy also sitting on the floor
with his back to the wall eating his
lunch alone and trying hard not to be
noticed and at that moment I had a
choice to make see the Invisible Man
strategy was working nobody had punched
me in the stomach yet that was a win and
if I reached out to that other boy I
might lose all of that he might make fun
of me he might call his friends over to
make fun of me he might decide that I
was bad but the thing that it stuck with
me all throughout my days the Invisible
Man the thing that I couldn’t get out of
my head as I just looked at this other
boy is that no matter how hard I tried
to be invisible what I wanted more than
anything was to be seen what I wanted so
desperately was for somebody to notice
my struggle sit down next to me and say
hey it’s tough to be new but I’ll be
your friend and we’ll get through this
together
and I realized that this other boy might
not be autistic but he probably was
still lonely still nervous still wishing
that somebody would see him and reach
out and I had the opportunity to be that
somebody so I stood up I walked over to
him and I said my name is Daniel and he
said my name is Bobby and there was a
long pause as we kind of sized each
other up and then he said do you like
video games and I knew at that moment
that I just made my first friend of high
school and not just my first friend but
my best friend this is a picture of the
two of us Bobby and I became inseparable
and what his friendship taught me is
that other people could be sources of
joy not just sources of pain and so I
switched my behavior to try to maximize
that joy and believe me joy is a far
better motivator than pain and in trying
to have more joyful connection I started
to reach out more I started to work on
my social skills I started
to make more friends people who cared
about me and loved me for who I was
even though who I was was still kind of
awkward but the problem is that love is
kind of like food you can work off of
reserves for a while but if you don’t
have a steady supply you’re going to get
into trouble and that’s what happened to
me a few years ago I moved here to
Oregon to start a graduate program in
clinical psychology and I left behind my
community the family and friends all of
the people who were filling my life with
a constant supply of love and after a
few failed attempts to make friends what
I found is that those old fears from
childhood started to gain new power they
started to creep back again and I
started to think maybe I don’t belong
maybe I don’t deserve to belong maybe I
really am bad all along and this became
self-fulfilling I stopped reaching out I
stopped going to social events my first
birthday in Oregon I spent alone in my
room eating a pizza bar myself because I
thought that if I invited people nobody
would come I had once again become the
Invisible Man
but this time somebody saw me one of my
classmates a man named Tyler noticed
that I was drifting through class never
connecting to anybody else and so he
decided to take a risk
one day he sat down next to me and he
said hey let’s get lunch and then lunch
turned to Friday nights playing video
games together because everything with
me is video games and then our video
game time turned into being workout
buddies and little by little collar
became my best friend it’s safe to say
that Kylie’s friendship rescued me you
can see a picture of our friendship
on my own I couldn’t shake my fears that
had kept me trapped I couldn’t believe
that I deserved a place to belong but
then I had another voice saying you do
belong you’re not bad
if you’re my friend I needed someone
else to speak that into my life I’m
reminded of an old Jewish parable called
the parable of the long spoons and it
says that heaven and hell are the exact
same place everybody’s seated or on a
big pot of delicious soup and everybody
has a really long spoon and in how
everyone is starving because they try to
feed themselves but they just can’t the
spoon is too big if the soup spills
every time but in heaven people have
realized something important they’ve
realized that their spoons are not for
feeding themselves they’re for feeding
someone else and so they feed each other
and are fed in return I used to think
that being autistic meant that there was
something wrong with my spoon that
everybody else could go out and get
their fill of love and connection and
belonging whenever they wanted but the
truth is I was wrong none of us have a
self-sufficient spoon all of us need
each other to create that place of
belonging and all of us deserve each
other to create that place of belonging
for us nobody is bad nobody is
disqualified and it’s never too late for
anybody to find that place and the cool
thing is we all have the ability to
create that place for someone else
just as Kylee reached out to me and I
reached out to Bobby you all have the
ability to reach out to somebody in your
life and that might sound like a small
thing but I want you to understand just
how monumental it actually is a
meta-analysis of a hundred and
forty-eight research studies covering
over three hundred thousand participants
found that greater social connection was
connected to a 50% reduced risk of
premature death 50% that’s equivalent to
the effect of quitting smoking and it’s
greater than the effect of exercise for
obesity on mortality if you discovered
that you had a 50% chance to heal any
disease just by touching somebody that
all you had to do was to reach out your
hand I guarantee you that every single
one of you would be jumping out of your
seats you’d be running to the nearest
hospital running into every single
saying everybody gets a high-five I want
to spread this healing as far as I can
if you had that incredible power of
healing you wouldn’t waste it and what I
want you to understand is that you do
have that kind of power not the power to
heal with the touch but the power to
heal with your friendship through the
simple decision to be a friend you could
help somebody else believe that they are
good you can give somebody the courage
to go through life knowing that they
don’t have to do it alone and in
someone’s darkest moment your love might
be the reason they choose life over
suicide that is the power of friendship
and that is a power that each and every
one of you have artistic neurotypical
social butterfly or total Wallflower it
doesn’t matter all of you have the
ability to sit down next to somebody and
invite them to lunch or to play video
games all of you have the ability to
call up somebody that you haven’t talked
to for a while just to check in all of
you have the ability to meet the deep
human need for connection and belonging
that somebody else has been caring and
maybe has been carrying for a long time
I am the man that I am today because of
the power of friendship because of
people who looked past my awkwardness
and saw my value because of the people
who gave me the courage to say that I am
not bad I am loved every single one of
you has that exact same power all of you
have the incredible mind-boggling
ability to change the course of
somebody’s life and your own through the
simple decision to be a friend
so put your spoon to work spread some
you [Applause]
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