Stephen Colbert on grief and gratitude
by Freddenver: Stephen Colbert
The conversation with Anderson Cooper really lands on how Stephen Colbert has to accept the whole thing to be grateful for life, even the parts he wishes never happened. It starts with this idea that there's a version of him from before September 11 1974 when his father and two brothers passed away, and honestly, the music from that summer will undo him in an instant because those memories go all the way to right after they died. He described being personally shattered and then having to reform himself inside this quiet grieving world that was created in the house, which feels like a heavy reality to sit with. When Cooper asked if he learned to love things he wished had not happened, Colbert didn't hesitate to say yes, noting that grief is basically what you call the punishment of God. The core belief here is pretty stark: it's a grief to exist and with existence comes suffering and there's no escaping that at all. Even though he wants it to have not happened and explicitly says he doesn't want it to have happened, the conclusion is that if you are grateful for your life then you have to be grateful for all of it and you can't pick and choose what you're grateful for.
Transcript (en)
There's a Steve Colbert. There's that kid before my father and my brothers died and It's actually kind of difficult. I have fairly vivid memories from right after they died to the present Like it's it's it's it's continuous and contiguous, you know, like it's all connected There's this big break in the cable of my memory at their death and everything before that has got an odd Ghostly to me it's like shards of glass like I feel like I Flashes, little bits of it. And then the things that really, like music, because they died in September. They died on September 11th. They died on September 11th, 1974. And the music from that summer leading up to it, like, I will undo me in an instant. You know, the song of the summer was Band on the Run. Wow. Do not play Band on the Run around me. You know. Yes. you become a different person. Like I was personally reshattered. I was personally shattered. And then you kind of reform yourself in this quiet, grieving world that was created in the house. And my mother had me to take care of, which I think was sort of a gift for her, a sense of purpose at that point, because I was the last child. But I also had her to take care of. And it became a very quiet house and very dark. And ordinary concerns of childhood suddenly kind of disappeared. I became, I won't say mature, because that actually was kind of delayed by the death of my father, by sort of restarting a 10. But I had certainly a different point of view than the children around me.
