May 14, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:12
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Slacker Dan says, sorry to hear about your father's recent passing. | |
| I lost my son. | |
| Oh, my God. Oh, my God. | |
| Oh, Dan, I am so sorry. | |
| I lost my son a year and a half ago, and I've been paralyzed with grief and depression. | |
| Any advice would be greatly appreciated. | |
| Oh, Dan. I mean, as a father, I mean, oh, I'm so sorry. | |
| I'm so, so sorry. | |
| That is... Heartbreaking. | |
| And listen, I appreciate your kind words about the loss of my dad, but it's nothing. | |
| It's nothing compared to what you're going through. | |
| And, you know, I wasn't close to my dad, and, you know, he didn't respond to my request to have honest conversations about anything. | |
| And I kind of get that now, like I was in possession of a hand grenade that could have blown up his remaining shreds of happiness by being honest. | |
| But, oh, Dan, oh, my gosh. | |
| Where you are... | |
| You know, my heart goes out to you. | |
| And again, I appreciate your kind words, but where you are at, my brother, is, I get it. | |
| I mean, that is absolutely appalling. | |
| And every parent thinks about this from time to time. | |
| You know, gosh, what happens if, you know, right? | |
| First of all, call me. | |
| Like, call in. We'll talk. | |
| And you're not the only person who's had this kind of loss, and if there's anything I can do to help, I will. | |
| What I will say here, though, is if you think of an afterlife, right? | |
| You think of a portal, right? | |
| Your son, your son's soul, your son's spirit, your son's history, your son's essence, your son's personality, can kind of peel back the air and poke his little head through and look at you, right? | |
| Would he want your loss of him to destroy your life? | |
| Would that be what he would want for you? | |
| Listen. There's a mother to your son. | |
| And, you know, odds are, as a man, that we're going to die before our wives do, right? | |
| Because women live longer than men, right? | |
| So those are the odds, right? | |
| Now, think of the mother of your child. | |
| I hope that you love her. | |
| I hope that you care about her. | |
| I mean, I think about the mother of my child. | |
| And what do you want... | |
| From them, after you die, let's say you die earlier, statistically you will, right? | |
| So let's say you die earlier. Do you want the rest of your wife's life to be lost in sorrow and grief and grieving and unable to get out of bed and being depressed and so on, right? I wouldn't want that for my wife. | |
| I mean, I get that it's going to be very sad for her, but I want her to be happy and that we had our time together and happy that we had a joyful life together and happy that she knew deep and powerful, unquestioning love from me. | |
| I want her to celebrate that, but I don't want her to sit and stare at my grave with her face dissolving in tears for the rest of her life, because that would not be to honor the joy that we had created together. | |
| So if you can imagine your son poking his head through the edge of the universe and looking at you, I got a feeling, I got a sense, that he would say something like, Dad, I'm gone. | |
| You're still here. | |
| We had a great time together. | |
| I was gone too soon, and I'm sorry for that. | |
| But you can't follow me into the grave, Dad." You can't follow me into the grave. | |
| That's two for the price of one. | |
| Don't give death that victory. | |
| Don't have him take down two of us rather than one. | |
| Remember me. Remember our times together. | |
| Be happy we had those times together. | |
| But I don't want you to lie here in the grave with me, cold, under the ground, with the worms and the no sun and the wet and the rot. | |
| You belong up there, not down here. | |
| Maybe you can make a new family. | |
| Maybe you can be a new dad. | |
| Maybe you can bring that love and that skill and that beauty to a new child or children. | |
| But the coffin is too small for the two of us, Dad. | |
| You can't be here with me. | |
| Take me with you in your memories. | |
| Remember the great times that we had. | |
| But only one of us is buried. | |
| Two is two too many. | |
| And it certainly is one too many. | |
| So, Dad, go have some fun. | |
| Because otherwise you're going to make me feel really guilty. | |
| Because I couldn't really control dying. | |
| But if you end up with no happiness, no joy, no life, because I died, that makes me really guilty. | |
| I feel terrible about that. | |
| I feel really guilty about that. | |
| Release me from that. Look, if you stop being sad, it's not like you won't remember me anymore. | |
| It's not like I'll vanish. | |
| I know I'm always going to be with you. | |
| I know that I'm going to be always present in your mind. | |
| I know that. You're not abandoning me if you have happiness. | |
| It's not a betrayal of me if you have happiness. | |
| It's a betrayal of my potential that my death has robbed you of your life. | |
| I shouldn't be some sort of vampire hanging onto your neck and sucking every Piece of plasma joy out of your veins as humanly possible. | |
| That's not my legacy. | |
| That's not what I want out of this situation. | |
| For God's sakes, man, go be free. | |
| Remember, with joy and with sadness, I get that. | |
| But get up out of the grave and go have a life. | |
| And don't give death more than he's taken. | |
| He took me. But your choice, that's voluntary. | |
| Don't give him one inch more than he took against our will. |
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