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April 17, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:50
Stefan Molyneux: Some Very Sad News
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Well, hi, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
It is April, April the 17th, 2020, and I hope you don't mind if we have a bit of a personal conversation.
Look, this show has always been unique in the breadth and the depth and the complexity of the conversation.
I've had people Opened their hearts to me over the years, 15 years.
I've been having very intensely personal conversations with people.
I have myself revealed things about my life and my history and all of that that, you know, it's not always the easiest thing to open your heart up in the public square and the public sphere.
It does bring sympathy. It does bring support.
It also brings, of course, caustic and contempt and sadist and so on.
But it is a kind of special relationship.
that I have with you as participants in this conversation about philosophy and philosophy is like the all-discipline that encompasses everything to do with life from the greatest abstractions to the most personal pains from the reach for eternity to our infinite mortality we do the whole thing and I've really weighed about whether to have this conversation with you or not.
And, well, I hate hiding things.
I really do. I feel very disconnected from myself, from the audience, if I have something on my mind and I don't share it with you.
And I don't mean to share it with you to burden you or anything like this, because this, frankly, is something we're all going to Go through, we hope, I suppose, because the alternative is even worse.
But I don't want to keep things from you.
I can't sort of look at the camera, look at you, imagine we're having a conversation, as we in fact are, and have something floating around in my brain that I can't talk about with you.
I've tried that in the past.
It really doesn't work, and it's disrespectful to the honesty that we have in this conversation.
So I will try and keep things relatively brief.
And let me just tell you the strangest coincidences in the world, which is I've had a poem in my drawer for like over 30 years, 35 years or whatever, right?
And I didn't do much with it.
I mentioned it on the show many, many, many years ago, but in December I recorded this poem called Farewell Father, which is a eulogy for a dead father.
And I sat on it. I didn't do anything with it.
It was on the channel. I just didn't publish it.
And then I just published it a couple of days ago.
And wouldn't you know, my father just died.
Died. A couple of days after, I put this poem out.
I don't know from what he died.
I don't know. I didn't even know he was ill.
I didn't know any of these things.
But look, I'm going to have conversations with people about very personal subjects, and I didn't want this to be something I was bypassing or skating over or avoiding.
Because it's a big deal.
It's a big deal. Now, for those of you who don't know, my father and I, we weren't close.
At all. When I was a baby, when I was actually in boarding school, he encouraged me or paid for me to go to boarding school for a couple of years when I was six.
We had to write a letter to our parents every weekend after getting our hair cut, and I would write to him, dear, using his first name.
And people, like the school teachers, they would get mad at me.
They'd say, you've got to write to your father.
He's your father. And I'm like...
I didn't connect with it.
I mean, I did. Of course, I did what they said, because they would beat you if you didn't.
But he left when I was a baby.
Now, I did meet with him several times over the years.
But, you know, this is partly why I just didn't want to withhold things from the audience here, is that I always felt with my father that I was withholding the actual facts of my childhood.
The actual facts of my childhood, very briefly, is that...
I suffered from extreme violence at the hands of my mother, the woman that my father chose to marry and then chose to leave me with when he went to Africa.
And we were born in Ireland, grew up in England, moved to Canada.
And so I always felt like I was withholding from him the facts of my existence, the most pertinent facts of my early existence.
That feeling sucks. I don't know if you've ever had to carry a secret and stare people in the face and not say what is uppermost in your mind.
It is a very strange zombie-like death-in-life experience.
Like your brain has been replaced with aimlessly swimming goldfish that just crapped the water to occlude your vision.
It's a very strange situation.
And... So with my father, I always felt that I was withholding, that I was not being honest.
And I made a commitment at the very beginning of this show to To be honest, you know, I can't ask for honesty from you guys and then not provide it myself.
I can't ask for directness from you guys and not provide it for myself.
Now, if I was just some guy who read teleprompters or I was some weatherman, this would not be central to the conversation.
But given that this is, I've got a whole book about real-time relationships and being honest in relationships and direct with people.
And what am I going to do then not talk about this, even though it's going to have a strong effect on me over the next little while?
I either stop doing shows and don't tell you why, or I kind of push through and do shows and...
pretend?
No, no, no, no.
There's plenty of time to be fake when you're dead.
You can sit there in the urn and pretend to be interested in family conversations.
But I'm not doing that with you guys.
I'm not living that way.
I'm not living that way.
I made that vow many years ago.
And with my father, I did tell him, before I did the show, long before I did the show, I did finally, like, I wrote to him and I told him everything that had, oh, not everything, I I wrote to him and I told him everything that had, oh, not everything, I never But I wrote to him about what had happened to me at the hands of the woman he ever said
A, chose to marry and B, chose to have children with, and I guess C, chose to leave those children with.
I wrote to him a couple of times, didn't hear back, a couple of times, didn't hear back.
And then I finally got a response, but it was very noncommittal, very abstract.
And do you ever have this thing where you reveal something that's really important to you, to someone that you care about, and there's like a little bit of a break through the matrix, a break through the shell, and you kind of reach through that portal of a crack to defense, and you touch the person briefly, and then seals up again.
And then what happened was, very shortly thereafter, he just went back to, it's not like a broken record or a metronome, but just this, well, Steph, you should take care of your mother.
I should take care of my mother.
The woman who damn near killed me, I should take care of her.
Well, what kind of conversation can you have with someone at that point?
You know, when you've Bared your history and bared your soul and asked for some recognition, some sympathy.
You should take care of your mother.
Well, Dad, you chose her.
I didn't. You chose her.
I didn't. You got the luxury of choice.
I didn't. And you, Dad, couldn't handle her.
So you moved to Africa.
Well, I didn't have a plane ticket at the age of six months.
Now it just sort of struck me, I couldn't even go to the funeral if I wanted to.
And he would write to me, You know, I don't know if you've ever had this in your life.
It's like people aren't really trying to be offensive, but they manage it somehow.
And it's not because I'm an overly prickly person or defensive person.
So he would write to me things like, Steph, it's important that you don't waste your talents.
He would write this to me even after the success of this philosophy show, right?
700 million views and downloads, a couple of million followers on social media.
This is back when I was able to go and give speeches around the world before communist violence.
Well, first it de-platformed me and now it's de-platformed everyone from their jobs.
So he'd give me this bland advice that was just kind of offensive.
Don't waste your talents. Sort of implies that I am wasting my talents.
I mean, I have things I can be criticized for.
I have my faults. But wasting my talents?
That's not one of them.
And it is kind of an insult, right?
I mean, you don't say to Tom Hanks, it's important not to waste your acting talents.
You don't say to Freddie Mercury when he was alive, it's important not to waste your musical talent.
I wasn't wasting my talent.
Or he would say, you should be a politician.
I mean, just shows he'd never listen to my show.
Never listen to my show.
It's actually true of everyone in my family of origin, to my knowledge.
So it was hard to connect.
And he was both harsh and awkward.
I remember when I was a kid, he would wrap me on the head with his knuckles if I did something he didn't like.
Painful. And so I had barely spoken to him in many, many, many years.
Because I don't remember him from my childhood other than when we would meet from time to time.
I would spend some summers in Ireland.
I went to visit Africa twice.
Once at six and once at fifteen.
But now he's dead.
And now the reconciliation, the connection, the resolution, the closure, The conversation can never occur.
Now, it's funny because I've always had this skepticism of...
I've called it before, like, the regret curse.
You know, the regret curse.
Like, if you don't...
If you don't resolve things with your father and then he dies, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
That's always struck me as a very manipulative and destructive curse to put on someone.
Because it has you run after this desperate absolution or peace that's completely in the power of the other person's hands to give to you or to withhold from you.
And you can't make people talk to you.
You can't make people listen to you.
You can speak your truth, you can speak your honesty, but you can't wrench open people's Ears like some jam jar from three years ago.
The closure, the resolution, the peace in my relationship with my father was under my control to speak.
It was not under my control to gain the closure because I can't do that.
In any negotiation, you can control your side, not the other person.
You can influence, but...
So, when I found out today...
I was like, okay, that's a little bewildering.
That's a little shocking. And how do I feel?
How do I feel? Well, I mean, the short answer is I'll find out over time.
But I'll tell you, like, now how I feel is I genuinely believe that I did everything I could to gain resolution in this relationship.
I tried a number of times, multiple times, to be honest, to be direct.
I would not have ever refused a conversation and did not refuse conversations.
But there was never any recognition of reality.
There was never any recognition of my past, of my history.
And there were constant exhortations to do better in life.
Not a great thing to hear.
I mean, yeah, we can always do better, but, you know, don't waste your talents, go be a politician, and And there were constant exhortations to take care of my mother, which after he knew how violent she was, how destructive she was.
So the theory that I had for many years was there isn't a regret curse.
There is not a regret curse. If you've done what is within your power to try and resolve things, you sit down, you have conversations with people, right?
And I did everything I could.
I don't look back and say, well, I should have been more honest or I should have been more direct or I should have reached out more.
I did all of that.
And you want to be, I mean, I want to be a communicator, not a stalker.
I want to try and connect with people.
I don't want to chase them down.
And try and rip a connection out of them like you're trying to fumble for some long-gone umbilical cord.
I can't do that. That's creepy.
So I set my piece.
I asked very clearly for what I wanted.
And people make that choice.
And I don't know if it was sudden.
Maybe he's old, so probably not.
But I don't know if it was an accident, although I don't think so.
I had not heard any issues with regards to his health.
But given that he probably had some time, I know that contacting me was not in his thoughts.
Or if it was in his thoughts, he did not act upon that.
In other words, he contacted me for many years to give me bland and offensive advice, but he did not contact me to say that he was dying and he's been thinking of me.
I can't do anything about that either.
I'm not hard to find on the internet.
I'm not hard to find on the internet.
And I'm not averse to conversations, as you know.
So my theory was that if you do what you can reasonably do to connect with people, there's not a regret curse when they die.
And so far, I don't feel that.
I mean, it's sad. It's sad.
Don't get me wrong. It's a sad thing as a whole.
But my main sadness is that it's not sadder.
My main sadness is that it's not actually sadder.
So that's my update.
I want to leave you with a couple of thoughts here.
Because I'm a big one for trying to extract as much positive out of everything that happens.
It's not so much what happens to you in life, it's what you do with it.
And there's so much gold that you can mine out of this manure pile of mortality that it's worth remembering that.
So first of all, with regards to my father, without a doubt, absolutely, completely and totally, he made me a better man.
He made me a better husband and a better father.
I learned by observing and by listening to my mother talk for endless years about my father.
I learned a lot of what not to do.
And through that, you learn a lot of what to do.
Without my father in my life, doing what he did and not doing what he didn't do, I would not be as good a husband and as good as a father as I am.
I mean, he moved to Africa.
I barely leave my daughter aside.
So maybe the pendulum can be thought of swung a little bit too far, but that's the side you want it to swing to, right?
That's the side you want it to swing to.
Intimacy and connection. And I acknowledge that.
Do I thank him for it? Not really.
I think he would have been happier and better if we'd connected.
But I will give him that respect that he drove me in the opposite direction of his decisions to the point where seeing him slide into a kind of hell propelled me jetpack-like towards the heaven that I currently live in.
And I... With all the challenges and difficulties in the world and everything that's going on, I live in an acre of paradise.
With regards to my relations, with regards to the meaning and what it is I'm able to achieve with my life, I don't feel that I could find more muscle that I haven't developed yet to use my skills to the best, to help people connect, to bring virtue, reason, and truth and courage to the world.
I am very happy and satisfied and enormously grateful.
And I think my dad's lack of wisdom drove me towards wisdom in a very positive way.
So I will give him that respect that he really did, perhaps inadvertently, probably inadvertently, help me to become the man that I am.
Just as my mom really helped me choose a great wife.
Really helped me choose a great, great wife.
But here's what I want you guys to get out of this.
This is my sorrow.
This is my loss. And I want to be honest because it's going to have an influence on me for a little while.
But here's the thing.
I wish I were sadder.
I wish I had more to miss.
You know, it's the greatest lie of the fatherless son.
Well, how could you miss what you never had?
Well... You can.
You really can. And you really do.
And in fact, missing what you never had is one of the saddest things in life.
It's one of the saddest things in life.
So, here's what I want you to get out of all of this.
And look, I know that you guys, you're listening to this show, I'm sure you're doing great things with your life, but just like me, we can always use that little bit of encouragement, that little bit of this one goes up to 11 when it comes to honesty and integrity.
Please, my friends, I'm begging you.
Be someone that people will really miss.
Be someone that when the skyhook of mortality yanks you from this mortal coil, people will miss you like they just had a ventricle ripped out of their heart.
Be someone that people will miss.
Be someone that people treasure so much that if you're gone, they will ache.
Be someone that people will miss.
Fill people up so that when you're gone, they'll notice.
Don't be one of these I mean, it's an extreme, of course, but don't be one of these people that the neighbors have to wait for the flies to gather and the stench to spread before they call the body removal people.
Be someone who leaves a crater in the world.
Be someone who rockets up and parts the very clouds.
Be someone that inspires.
Be someone that empowers.
Be someone that encourages.
Be someone that leads or be a great follower.
Be someone that people are going to miss when you're gone because, by God, you're going to be gone.
But don't be like one of these spears thrown from a great height that just disappears into a lake like, boom, barely a ripple.
Don't be that. Don't be that.
Please be. Be someone that people are genuinely going to miss because, look, We have a short time in this world.
You know, this improbable accumulation of starshite that glimmers in our glorious neurons is here and gone.
It's less than an electric arc flash in the midnight of eternity.
We are here for a very short time.
The days may be long, but the years are bloody short.
And look, get this lesson.
Look, me, you, we're all tempted by pettiness and avoidance and procrastination.
Do you think I wanted to sit down and talk about this?
Well, no.
No, but I've got a commitment here.
I've got a commitment. And maybe my father did know he was unwell.
Maybe he knew he was old.
He knew he wasn't going to last much longer in general.
And maybe he woke up and he thought, hmm, I really should call Steph.
I really should listen to his show while I'm in hospital.
I really should grab on to what comes and goes so quickly.
Connection. Connection.
The stuff that keeps us alive after we're dead.
The threads that keep our souls in the eternity of the here and now through connection with others.
And maybe he said, hmm, well, that's kind of uncomfortable.
Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Or I'll do it later.
I'll do it next week. You put it off!
And every time you put it off, death takes one step closer.
Because it's going to take you either way.
You can procrastinate yourself into eternity.
And all that is left is the loss of opportunity.
You can procrastinate yourself into a ghost that doesn't even clank, that is invisible.
We're all tempted by it.
Somebody offends you, you just want to withdraw, make that other person wrong, or you want to spend your time.
I think of the people who come and give me fake news on live streams in the hopes that I will put out something that's not true.
Don't do that stuff with your precious gift of existence.
Don't. Troll.
Don't be mean. Don't be vicious.
Don't be petty. Don't be nothing.
Don't suck people into inconsequentiality through barbed, vacuous utterances.
Maybe you got someone in your life you need to apologize to.
Maybe you're a parent and you didn't do that great a job of parenting.
Well, Go apologize.
People think that they're going to lose other people's respect by openly apologizing and making amends.
No, no, no, no. A genuine apology is a beautiful thing.
It's like a prayer. It draws the angels to you and drives the devils away.
Because if you genuinely apologize to people and they manipulate and shit on you, well, that's closure.
Because they're being honest.
But apologize. If there's someone you want to tell how important they are to you, please, God above, tell them how important they are to you.
Unpack your heart. Be open.
If there's someone you need, tell them that you need them.
If there's someone you want to ask out, go find out if they want to date you.
Go and do it. Whatever you're going to do, whatever you want to do, do it.
And do it now. And do it committed.
Don't let days slide you by.
Dodging authenticity like Neo with spiraling bullet time shards of connection.
Reach out and connect with people.
Make the phone call. Go see them in person.
Well, maybe not these days.
FaceTime them. Because we're all running out of time.
Time ran out for my father just today.
All the little sand ran through the hourglass and maybe at the end when he knew he was going, he thought with the last few grains of sand, everything that he should have done, maybe the things he should have listened to others about, the better decisions he could have made.
Don't wait till the end because then it is worse than too late and don't let your last days, your last hours, your last minutes, your last seconds be filled with regret.
If there is a hell or a heaven, it is composed of our thoughts of our life in our last few seconds stretched out to eternity.
Whatever you have to say to people, for good or for ill, whatever honesty you are hoarding on like a squirrel with nuts over the winter, the more you hoard, the colder it becomes.
The more you close yourself off from people, the more sealed your ice tomb becomes.
Hoarding is supposed to help you survive through to the spring.
Hoard your food. You can make it.
Hoard yourself. And you die.
It wasn't a wasteland of isolation.
It's a terrible fate.
It's a terrible fate.
We're afraid of honesty.
We're afraid of connection. We're afraid of truth.
Or rather, we're afraid of...
If we speak our truth...
How few people will love us for it and how many people will hate us for what I say.
To hell with those who hate truth.
Speak the truth, though the skies should fall.
Speak the truth. Summon the angels.
And banish the devils.
And for God's sake, don't wait.
Whether you speak, whether you lie, whether you avoid, whether you procrastinate or whether you withhold...
The angel of procrastination, commonly called death, will find you and get you either way.
This is Tevan Molyneux from Free Domain.
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