| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Normal Amount of Pain
00:03:06
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| But I know from all the talks I have given how helpful it has been for people to realize that you don't have to be bubbling all the time. | |
| That's not normal. | |
| That might be manic. | |
| The fact of the matter is, it is normal to have... | |
| Great bouts of sadness, to have a lot of unhappiness, that is par for the course. | |
| That is what life entails. | |
| Now, if you're always unhappy or worse, depressed, it is something to certainly look into. | |
| But what I really work at, this is the key difference here, what I work at in the book and in my talks is not to make people happy. | |
| It is to reduce, and here come the operative words, to reduce gratuitous pain. | |
| There is normal amount of pain in life. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| The only way to avoid it is to watch television constantly, which is why I think people do. | |
| It's a numbing device, television, and I have a deep, deep antipathy to television. | |
| It is normal to experience pain. | |
| What I work against is gratuitous pain, where it's just unnecessary. | |
| Why are you suffering? | |
| Suffering is normal. | |
| Dostoevsky put it, Very directly. | |
| To live is to suffer. | |
| And that is true. | |
| And by the way, to fully live is to suffer even more. | |
| If you really want to live, after all, I talk, for example, to singles, especially single men. | |
| I have a talk, which you may want to give to single men that you may know. | |
| It's called The Case for Marriage. | |
| And coming from a single man, excuse me, a married man who was a single man, who totally identifies with where they're coming from, it has some persuasive power. | |
| But one of the things that I make clear is that I don't promise you endless happiness through marriage and family, but the question that you really have to confront is do you want to grow? | |
| Do you want to live life fully? | |
| And the more fully you live life, the more you will suffer. | |
| That's just a fact of life. | |
| It's something, if you want marriage and you want children and you want other things in your life, the more you bring into your life, the more pain you will have. | |
| That's a fact. | |
| It doesn't come painlessly. | |
| If people knew that, maybe there would be a lot less marriage to begin with. | |
| Maybe people do go into marriage thinking, ah, this is the end of my ills, now I will be happy because he will make me happy. | |
| One of the silliest things anyone in the world could ever possibly believe, but nevertheless, or even funnier, Well, we're not having a great marriage, so we'll have a kid. | |
| Then we'll really be happy. | |
| Which is perhaps the single stupidest thing a human being could utter. | |
| I can't think of a more silly idea in the world than let's have kids, that'll make us happy. | |
|
Seeing the Audience React
00:00:45
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|
| Kids, kids bring joy, there is no question. | |
| But my argument for kids is not you'll be happier. | |
| My argument for kids is you will live life more fully. | |
| But it will bring immense amounts of pain. | |
| Right? | |
| Yes, it's one of the statements I make, which is least controversial. | |
| I must say, people just going, huh, huh, huh. | |
| That's the general view. | |
| You see, you know, one of the joys of speaking is I get to see you, you don't. | |
| You just get to see me. | |
| And it is, one day, Brent, we have to do it vice versa. | |
| We have to record from here. | |
| Just have all the reactions going, "Oh God, is that true? | |
| Oh God, is that true?" | |