I hadn’t planned to see I Swear.
A film about Tourette’s, full of shouting and swearing? I hesitated. But I watched the trailer, funny, tender, clearly more than a simple “feel-good” story, and sensed there was something deeper. So I booked a seat.
It turned out to be one of those rare films that stay with you. I Swear, directed by Kirk Jones, tells the true story of John Davidson, who first came to public attention in the BBC documentary John’s Not Mad back in 1989. From his teens, John lived with Tourette syndrome, the tics, compulsions, and outbursts that the world found hard to understand. He was bullied, punished, and often isolated. Yet what could have broken him instead shaped his life’s purpose.
Over the years John became an educator and activist, teaching Britain about Tourette’s long before we had language for such things. He spoke to schools, police, and health professionals, anyone willing to listen. In 2019, he was awarded an MBE for his work. What struck me most wasn’t the recognition, but his steady kindness. Robert Aramayo plays him with intelligence and gentleness, capturing that mix of humour and grace that comes when someone stops fighting who they are.
The film doesn’t tidy anything up. It’s funny, fierce, and full of heart, yet uncomfortable in places. It asks when we laugh at and when we laugh with, and what it means to claim, or refuse, the label of “disability.”
At one point John insists that Tourette’s isn’t a disability at all. That made me pause. Maybe for him, it was never about overcoming something; it was about understanding it, and helping others do the same.
That, to me, is where purpose often begins
That, to me, is where purpose often begins: not in the smooth, successful parts of life, but in what hurts.
Watching this story unfold, I thought about how, as we age, we start to see the pattern, the ways we’ve turned loss into compassion, confusion into clarity, pain into purpose. Sometimes our gift to others is simply how we’ve learned to live with what we can’t fix.
I walked out of the cinema with that quiet ache of recognition. These solo moments matter, the space to reflect, to feel, to let meaning settle. Seeing the film with someone else might have dulled that. It’s in solitude that understanding often arrives.
And maybe that’s what later life offers us, if we let it: time to make peace with what’s shaped us, and to turn our own stories outward, not as lessons, but as offerings.
A reflection point
I’ve realised how much I need these small, solitary rituals, a quiet seat in a dark cinema, a walk home without music, time to think about what the story unlocked. I used to imagine purpose as something grand, but it often reveals itself in these gentle pauses, when we’re not performing, just being.
If you’ve found your own way of making meaning from what once hurt, I’d love to hear. How do you create space for reflection in your life right now.
