As we try to work off that Thanksgiving feast by putting up the Christmas lights and (too often already) shoveling snow, it might be a good time also to reflect on the lessons of the past year and the opportunities that await us in 2011.

We’ve talked a lot in this column about the amazing value that people with developmental conditions like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and so forth have to offer — in our classrooms, in the workplace, and in the community. We’ve reflected on the way labels like “disabled” and unfair stereotypes limit the civil rights of people with developmental conditions through isolation, lack of opportunity, and low expectations.

The irony of this, of course, is that it can be very difficult to sort out “ability” from “disability” when people in their glorious diversity engage with each other. For example, we saw on 60 Minutes the story of Derek who “doesn’t know how” to hold up three fingers when asked and doesn’t know his right hand from his left. But Derek is a musical savant and virtuoso pianist who can play any piece of music he’s ever heard in any key or style you request.

Then we read story after story this year about elite athletes who derive strength and inspiration from relatives and friends with developmental conditions. The young man with Down syndrome who travels with the Seattle Sounders and even addresses the team in the locker room before games. The elite women’s basketball player who walked away from her scholarship and brilliant career at Connecticut because she couldn’t be successful without the daily inspiration and example of her sister with cerebral palsy. The young man who said of his “older brothers” on the University of Cincinnati football team who unanimously adopted him, “they inspire me and I inspire them.” And most recently, the wonderful story of the high school student with Down syndrome whose touchdown run for the Snohomish High football team has gone viral on YouTube.

But what about everyone else? For everyone adopted by a football or soccer team, there are hundreds if not thousands of ordinary people with developmental conditions whose potential is not being realized, whose qualities are not being evoked and valued through participation in the classroom, in the workplace, in the community. We are still a society that segregates people, a competitive society where “survival of the fittest” is still the dominant ethos, where the rules are written by those who consider themselves the fittest, where the very definition of “fitness” (and “ability”) too often means being “like me.”

The paradox of these beautiful stories is that they also contain an element of sadness. They portray the glorious human value evoked in everyone involved when we focus on ability instead of disability. But sadly these stories are often the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is still segregation and separation — in “self contained” classrooms, in “special” education programs, at “special ed” proms and PTSA meetings, and later in life at “sheltered workshops” where people are relegated because of their disabilities.

We can do better than this. Rich human value and engagement are rare commodities that are much too precious to waste. In a highly evolved civil society as complex as ours, we need everyone at the table. We need diversity to learn and grow and work effectively together — diversity of perspective, diverse ways of thinking, diverse ways of experiencing the world around us. We need each other. And perhaps above all, we need to be inspired.

From all of us here at Northwest Center we wish you a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year — a new year filled with inclusion and the rich human value and inspiration that inevitably results.

Tom Everill is the President & CEO of Northwest Center. Contact him at inside@nwcenter.org.