This moved me last night and I wanted to share – it’s from an
interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and comedian Stephen Colbert...
Anderson Cooper’s Dad died when he was 10 (heart attack) and he lost his Mom in
early June. Stephen Colbert’s Dad and two of his brothers died in a plane crash
when Stephen was 10 and his Mom died a few years ago too.
It’s really clear in the interview that Anderson Cooper is still very
much in grief and he is asking some pretty big questions that are personal, not
part of his “newsman” persona.
The interview is here -- https://youtu.be/iZ_zajwFPDs
-- this is the
part that really moved me:
Anderson Cooper: I’m not the person I
meant to be. I’m not the person I started out to be (because of the grief /
loss / trauma).
Stephen Colbert: But you are the person
you were meant to be.
Anderson Cooper: Maybe, maybe not. Maybe
this is a warped version of ...
Stephen Colbert: So there’s another time
line with a happier Anderson Cooper?
Anderson Cooper: Yeah! I mean no. There’s
not, it doesn’t exist, an alternate universe but... but yes, I guess...
Stephen Colbert: But that’s what I mean
about faith.
My experience and learning from the
experience of my mother, what I read and what I experience in my particular
faith, extremely imperfectly, admittedly, is that there isn’t another time.
This is it. And the bravest thing you can do is to accept with gratitude
the world as it is and then, as Galdalf says, so too all people who are in such
times.
Anderson Cooper: You went on to tell an
interviewer that you have learned to love “the thing that I most wish had not
happened.” You went on to
say “what punishments of God are not gifts?” Do you really believe that?
Stephen Colbert: Yes. It is a gift to exist. And with existence
comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. And I guess I’m either a
Catholic or a Buddhist when I say that because I’ve heard that from both
traditions.
But I didn’t learn it - that I was
grateful for the thing I most wished didn’t happen - but I realized it. It’s an
odd, guilty kind of feeling. I don’t want it to have happened. I wish it had
not happened.
But, if you’re grateful for your life, which I think is a
positive thing to do - not everybody is, and I’m not always - it’s the
most positive thing to do, and
you have to be grateful for all of it . You can’t pick and choose what you’re
grateful for.
And then, so what do you get from loss?
You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that
other person, which allows you to love more deeply, and to understand what it’s
like to be a human being, if it’s true that all humans suffer.
So, at a young age I suffered something
so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life, with friends, or
with my wife or with my children, is that I have some understanding that
everyone is suffering and, however imperfectly, acknowledge that suffering, and
to connect with them, to love them in a deep way... and that’s what I mean,
it’s about the fullness of your humanity.
What’s
the point of being here, being human, if you cannot be the most human you can
be? I want to be the most human I can be. And that involves acknowledging, and
ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn’t happen- because
they gave me a gift.
and in the Christian tradition, that’s
the gift of the sacrifice of Jesus: that God suffers too.
❤
No comments:
Post a Comment