Like a lot of us on the spectrum, words have a nearly mythic appeal.

Because of how my brain’s wired, certain words sound like fingers on harp strings.

Others like a piano falling down a hill.

And others just make me giggle.

I don’t think that’s autism, but there’s a middle school kid trapped in all of us.

Mine snickers at a word I like a lot: seminal.

“Sounds like semen,” he’ll snort at me.

Merriam Webster defines it thus:

  1. of, relating to, or consisting of seed or semen / “seminal discharge”
  2. containing or contributing the seeds of later development : CREATIVE, ORIGINAL / “a seminal book”

So my inner middle schooler’s not wrong.

Words like seminal have joined words like “epic,” or “queen,” or “outrage” in this current age as signs that we no longer have a sense of scale.

Still, there are things that I look back and see them germinating growth.

Today it’s Ram Dass’ book, Walking Each Other Home, a dialogue and meditation on life and death that I found through Pete Holmes’ podcast, “You Made It Weird”.

I thought I wanted more from this life.

Some fame, notoriety.

Find my tribe.

Those who would assemble in time of need.

And it showed in how I saw the world, or at least the people in it.

Slotting them according to accomplishment.

Achievement.

How successful they were in their endeavors.

And how I hadn’t “made it”.

Likely I never will.

Now?

I just want someone to walk me home.

Arm in arm between this moment and our last.

Hopeful that the last is a ways down our road, but living in each moment and its joy.

So whenever that end arrives, we’ll share that moment, too.