I'm sat tonight in a hotel in Wales watching the season premier of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. I'm not a huge fan of the programme, it's very much a formula that's been done to death over the past twenty or so years, but it still has the power to move.
Who can fail to have been touched by Ellie Goldstein's imperfect but utterly joyous cha cha? It's what Saturday night television is supposed to be all about, the power of the human spirit over the limitations that are thrown at us. It's a perfect example that each of us have a powerful and important contribution to make.
Funnily enough as I was watching Strictly I was also reading a copy of this week's Spectator and around the same time Ellie was dancing I was reading Laurie Penny's powerful column detailing the challenges she has living with autism.
It is a column that brilliantly articulates that "In the 1930s, eugenicists studied autistic people in order to find ways of eliminating us from the gene pool. The Nazi solution to the persistent problem of people who struggle with sensory issues... was, well, exactly what you probably imagine it was."
That solution would have been the answer for Ellie Goldstein, Laurie Penny, and for someone very close to me.
I'm not going into the details of the struggles that person faces in their everyday life, it is not my story to tell, but their contribution to our world is every bit as powerful and important as those around them.
In her column Penny notes that in his intervention earlier this week President Trump spoke about finding a cure for autism. There is merit in trying to find a cure but, as Penny points out, almost all of the funding in autism research is funnelled towards finding a cure "rather than actually trying to help autistic people and their families live better lives."
Neurodivergence is a disability, but those living with it bring a whole new perspective to our world that adds colour and insight. We should all be championing that diversity, our world is lessened when our its aim is to deliver homogeneity.