I Am One of Our Stories By David Byrne

If we can hold up a mirror to ourselves and change, that’s a reason to be cheerful.

From Reasons To Be Cheerful By: David Byrne READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE.

A little over a week ago, I posted a statement to social media regarding a video skit I’d done over 30 years ago. In this skit I appear as a number of characters, and one of them is in blackface. You can view the video skit here. You can read my statement here.

I encourage a dialogue and a discussion about my past mistakes. I think examining our personal and collective histories is a worthwhile thing to do. If that’s going to happen, it may as well start with me.

I’d like to think we can all learn and change, and that we are thankfully not stuck making the same mistakes over and over. We have the potential to grow. This is a reason to be cheerful — not my past behavior, silly, but the fact that we can hold a mirror up to that behavior, that we can evolve as individuals.

The special project we’re launching soon touches on some of these themes. It contains stories of people talking, meeting, discussing and changing. I’d like to think I’m one of these stories, too.

Reasons to be Cheerful is a non-profit editorial project that is tonic for tumultuous times.

We tell stories that reveal that there are, in fact, a surprising number of reasons to feel cheerful. Many of these reasons come in the form of smart, proven, replicable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. We’re here to tell you about some of them. Through sharp reporting, our stories balance a sense of healthy optimism with journalistic rigor, and find cause for hope. We are part magazine, part therapy session, part blueprint for a better world.

Reasons to be Cheerful was founded by artist and musician David Byrne, who believes in the power of approaching the world with curiosity—in art, in music, in collaboration and in life. Under the banner of Byrne’s non-profit organization, Arbutus, Reasons to be Cheerful embodies this sensibility, applying it now to the future of our world. Through stories of hope, rooted in evidence, Reasons to be Cheerful aims to inspire us all to be curious about how the world can be better, and to ask ourselves how we can be part of that change.

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