WEBVTT

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As a student of adversity,

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I've been struck over the years

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by how some people

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with major challenges

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seem to draw strength from them,

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and I've heard the popular wisdom

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that that has to do with finding meaning.

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And for a long time,

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I thought the meaning was out there,

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some great truth waiting to be found.

NOTE Paragraph

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But over time, I've come to feel

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that the truth is irrelevant.

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We call it finding meaning,

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but we might better call it forging meaning.

NOTE Paragraph

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My last book was about how families

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manage to deal with various kinds of challenging

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or unusual offspring,

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and one of the mothers I interviewed,

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who had two children with
multiple severe disabilities,

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said to me, "People always give us

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these little sayings like,

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'God doesn't give you any
more than you can handle,'

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but children like ours

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are not preordained as a gift.

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They're a gift because that's what we have chosen."

NOTE Paragraph

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We make those choices all our lives.

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When I was in second grade,

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Bobby Finkel had a birthday party

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and invited everyone in our class but me.

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My mother assumed there
had been some sort of error,

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and she called Mrs. Finkel,

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who said that Bobby didn't like me

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and didn't want me at his party.

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And that day, my mom took me to the zoo

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and out for a hot fudge sundae.

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When I was in seventh grade,

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one of the kids on my school bus

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nicknamed me "Percy"

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as a shorthand for my demeanor,

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and sometimes, he and his cohort

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would chant that provocation

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the entire school bus ride,

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45 minutes up, 45 minutes back,

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"Percy! Percy! Percy! Percy!"

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When I was in eighth grade,

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our science teacher told us

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that all male homosexuals

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develop fecal incontinence

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because of the trauma to their anal sphincter.

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And I graduated high school

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without ever going to the cafeteria,

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where I would have sat with the girls

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and been laughed at for doing so,

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or sat with the boys

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and been laughed at for being a boy

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who should be sitting with the girls.

NOTE Paragraph

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I survived that childhood through a mix

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of avoidance and endurance.

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What I didn't know then,

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and do know now,

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is that avoidance and endurance

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can be the entryway to forging meaning.

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After you've forged meaning,

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you need to incorporate that meaning

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into a new identity.

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You need to take the traumas and make them part

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of who you've come to be,

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and you need to fold the worst events of your life

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into a narrative of triumph,

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evincing a better self

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in response to things that hurt.

NOTE Paragraph

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One of the other mothers I interviewed

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when I was working on my book

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had been raped as an adolescent,

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and had a child following that rape,

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which had thrown away her career plans

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and damaged all of her emotional relationships.

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But when I met her, she was 50,

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and I said to her,

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"Do you often think about the man who raped you?"

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And she said, "I used to think about him with anger,

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but now only with pity."

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And I thought she meant pity because he was

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so unevolved as to have done this terrible thing.

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And I said, "Pity?"

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And she said, "Yes,

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because he has a beautiful daughter

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and two beautiful grandchildren

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and he doesn't know that, and I do.

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So as it turns out, I'm the lucky one."

NOTE Paragraph

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Some of our struggles are things we're born to:

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our gender, our sexuality, our race, our disability.

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And some are things that happen to us:

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being a political prisoner, being a rape victim,

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being a Katrina survivor.

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Identity involves entering a community

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to draw strength from that community,

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and to give strength there too.

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It involves substituting "and" for "but" --

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not "I am here but I have cancer,"

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but rather, "I have cancer and I am here."

NOTE Paragraph

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When we're ashamed,

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we can't tell our stories,

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and stories are the foundation of identity.

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Forge meaning, build identity,

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forge meaning and build identity.

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That became my mantra.

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Forging meaning is about changing yourself.

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Building identity is about changing the world.

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All of us with stigmatized identities

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face this question daily:

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how much to accommodate society

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by constraining ourselves,

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and how much to break the limits

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of what constitutes a valid life?

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Forging meaning and building identity

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does not make what was wrong right.

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It only makes what was wrong precious.

NOTE Paragraph

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In January of this year,

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I went to Myanmar to interview political prisoners,

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and I was surprised to find them less bitter

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than I'd anticipated.

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Most of them had knowingly committed

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the offenses that landed them in prison,

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and they had walked in with their heads held high,

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and they walked out with their heads

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still held high, many years later.

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Dr. Ma Thida, a leading human rights activist

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who had nearly died in prison

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and had spent many years in solitary confinement,

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told me she was grateful to her jailers

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for the time she had had to think,

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for the wisdom she had gained,

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for the chance to hone her meditation skills.

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She had sought meaning

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and made her travail into a crucial identity.

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But if the people I met

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were less bitter than I'd anticipated

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about being in prison,

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they were also less thrilled than I'd expected

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about the reform process going on

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in their country.

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Ma Thida said,

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"We Burmese are noted

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for our tremendous grace under pressure,

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but we also have grievance under glamour,"

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she said, "and the fact that there have been

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these shifts and changes

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doesn't erase the continuing problems

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in our society

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that we learned to see so well

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while we were in prison."

NOTE Paragraph

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And I understood her to being saying

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that concessions confer only a little humanity,

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where full humanity is due,

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that crumbs are not the same

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as a place at the table,

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which is to say you can forge meaning

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and build identity and still be mad as hell.

NOTE Paragraph

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I've never been raped,

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and I've never been in anything
remotely approaching

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a Burmese prison,

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but as a gay American,

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I've experienced prejudice and even hatred,

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and I've forged meaning and I've built identity,

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which is a move I learned from people

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who had experienced far worse privation

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than I've ever known.

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In my own adolescence,

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I went to extreme lengths to try to be straight.

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I enrolled myself in something called

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sexual surrogacy therapy,

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in which people I was encouraged to call doctors

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prescribed what I was encouraged to call exercises

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with women I was encouraged to call surrogates,

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who were not exactly prostitutes

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but who were also not exactly anything else.

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(Laughter)

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My particular favorite

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was a blonde woman from the Deep South

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who eventually admitted to me

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that she was really a necrophiliac

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and had taken this job after she got in trouble

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down at the morgue.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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These experiences eventually allowed me to have

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some happy physical relationships with women,

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for which I'm grateful,

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but I was at war with myself,

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and I dug terrible wounds into my own psyche.

NOTE Paragraph

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We don't seek the painful experiences

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that hew our identities,

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but we seek our identities

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in the wake of painful experiences.

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We cannot bear a pointless torment,

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but we can endure great pain

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if we believe that it's purposeful.

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Ease makes less of an impression on us

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than struggle.

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We could have been ourselves without our delights,

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but not without the misfortunes

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that drive our search for meaning.

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"Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities,"

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St. Paul wrote in Second Corinthians,

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"for when I am weak, then I am strong."

NOTE Paragraph

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In 1988, I went to Moscow

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to interview artists of the Soviet underground,

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and I expected their work to be

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dissident and political.

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But the radicalism in their work actually lay

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in reinserting humanity into a society

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that was annihilating humanity itself,

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as, in some senses, Russian society

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is now doing again.

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One of the artists I met said to me,

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"We were in training to be not artists but angels."

NOTE Paragraph

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In 1991, I went back to see the artists

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I'd been writing about,

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and I was with them during the putsch

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that ended the Soviet Union,

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and they were among the chief organizers

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of the resistance to that putsch.

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And on the third day of the putsch,

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one of them suggested we walk up to Smolenskaya.

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And we went there,

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and we arranged ourselves in
front of one of the barricades,

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and a little while later,

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a column of tanks rolled up,

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and the soldier on the front tank said,

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"We have unconditional orders

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to destroy this barricade.

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If you get out of the way,

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we don't need to hurt you,

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but if you won't move, we'll have no choice

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but to run you down."

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And the artists I was with said,

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"Give us just a minute.

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Give us just a minute to tell you why we're here."

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And the soldier folded his arms,

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and the artist launched into a
Jeffersonian panegyric to democracy

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such as those of us who live

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in a Jeffersonian democracy

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would be hard-pressed to present.

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And they went on and on,

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and the soldier watched,

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and then he sat there for a full minute

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after they were finished

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and looked at us so bedraggled in the rain,

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and said, "What you have said is true,

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and we must bow to the will of the people.

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If you'll clear enough space for us to turn around,

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we'll go back the way we came."

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And that's what they did.

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Sometimes, forging meaning

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can give you the vocabulary you need

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to fight for your ultimate freedom.

NOTE Paragraph

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Russia awakened me to the lemonade notion

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that oppression breeds the power to oppose it,

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and I gradually understood that as the cornerstone

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of identity.

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It took identity to rescue me from sadness.

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The gay rights movement posits a world

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in which my aberrances are a victory.

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Identity politics always works on two fronts:

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to give pride to people who have a given condition

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or characteristic,

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and to cause the outside world

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to treat such people more gently and more kindly.

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Those are two totally separate enterprises,

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but progress in each sphere

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reverberates in the other.

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Identity politics can be narcissistic.

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People extol a difference only because it's theirs.

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People narrow the world and function

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in discrete groups without empathy for one another.

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But properly understood

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and wisely practiced,

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identity politics should expand

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our idea of what it is to be human.

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Identity itself

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should be not a smug label

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or a gold medal

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but a revolution.

NOTE Paragraph

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I would have had an easier life if I were straight,

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but I would not be me,

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and I now like being myself better

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than the idea of being someone else,

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someone who, to be honest,

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I have neither the option of being

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nor the ability fully to imagine.

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But if you banish the dragons,

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you banish the heroes,

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and we become attached

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to the heroic strain in our own lives.

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I've sometimes wondered

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whether I could have ceased
to hate that part of myself

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without gay pride's technicolor fiesta,

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of which this speech is one manifestation.

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I used to think I would know myself to be mature

00:13:24.465 --> 00:13:27.319
when I could simply be gay without emphasis,

00:13:27.319 --> 00:13:31.228
but the self-loathing of that period left a void,

00:13:31.228 --> 00:13:34.963
and celebration needs to fill and overflow it,

00:13:34.963 --> 00:13:38.657
and even if I repay my private debt of melancholy,

00:13:38.657 --> 00:13:41.413
there's still an outer world of homophobia

00:13:41.413 --> 00:13:44.302
that it will take decades to address.

00:13:44.302 --> 00:13:47.617
Someday, being gay will be a simple fact,

00:13:47.617 --> 00:13:50.466
free of party hats and blame,

00:13:50.466 --> 00:13:51.984
but not yet.

00:13:51.984 --> 00:13:54.733
A friend of mine who thought gay pride

00:13:54.733 --> 00:13:56.647
was getting very carried away with itself,

00:13:56.647 --> 00:13:58.211
once suggested that we organize

00:13:58.211 --> 00:14:00.233
Gay Humility Week.

00:14:00.233 --> 00:14:04.700
(Laughter) (Applause)

00:14:06.643 --> 00:14:08.838
It's a great idea,

00:14:08.838 --> 00:14:11.267
but its time has not yet come.

00:14:11.267 --> 00:14:13.252
(Laughter)

00:14:13.252 --> 00:14:15.451
And neutrality, which seems to lie

00:14:15.451 --> 00:14:18.205
halfway between despair and celebration,

00:14:18.205 --> 00:14:21.391
is actually the endgame.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:21.391 --> 00:14:23.911
In 29 states in the U.S.,

00:14:23.911 --> 00:14:27.173
I could legally be fired or denied housing

00:14:27.173 --> 00:14:29.339
for being gay.

00:14:29.339 --> 00:14:31.960
In Russia, the anti-propaganda law

00:14:31.960 --> 00:14:34.937
has led to people being beaten in the streets.

00:14:34.937 --> 00:14:36.993
Twenty-seven African countries

00:14:36.993 --> 00:14:39.891
have passed laws against sodomy,

00:14:39.891 --> 00:14:42.130
and in Nigeria, gay people can legally

00:14:42.130 --> 00:14:43.588
be stoned to death,

00:14:43.588 --> 00:14:46.278
and lynchings have become common.

00:14:46.278 --> 00:14:49.368
In Saudi Arabia recently, two men

00:14:49.368 --> 00:14:51.273
who had been caught in carnal acts,

00:14:51.273 --> 00:14:55.940
were sentenced to 7,000 lashes each,

00:14:55.940 --> 00:14:59.339
and are now permanently disabled as a result.

00:14:59.339 --> 00:15:01.210
So who can forge meaning

00:15:01.210 --> 00:15:03.990
and build identity?

00:15:03.990 --> 00:15:07.317
Gay rights are not primarily marriage rights,

00:15:07.317 --> 00:15:10.253
and for the millions who live in unaccepting places

00:15:10.253 --> 00:15:12.430
with no resources,

00:15:12.430 --> 00:15:14.910
dignity remains elusive.

00:15:14.910 --> 00:15:17.922
I am lucky to have forged meaning

00:15:17.922 --> 00:15:19.988
and built identity,

00:15:19.988 --> 00:15:22.285
but that's still a rare privilege,

00:15:22.285 --> 00:15:25.114
and gay people deserve more collectively

00:15:25.114 --> 00:15:28.550
than the crumbs of justice.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:28.550 --> 00:15:31.601
And yet, every step forward

00:15:31.601 --> 00:15:33.667
is so sweet.

00:15:33.667 --> 00:15:37.321
In 2007, six years after we met,

00:15:37.321 --> 00:15:39.378
my partner and I decided

00:15:39.378 --> 00:15:41.112
to get married.

00:15:41.112 --> 00:15:43.294
Meeting John had been the discovery

00:15:43.294 --> 00:15:45.150
of great happiness

00:15:45.150 --> 00:15:48.250
and also the elimination of great unhappiness,

00:15:48.250 --> 00:15:50.864
and sometimes, I was so occupied

00:15:50.864 --> 00:15:53.365
with the disappearance of all that pain

00:15:53.365 --> 00:15:55.717
that I forgot about the joy,

00:15:55.717 --> 00:15:59.464
which was at first the less
remarkable part of it to me.

00:15:59.464 --> 00:16:02.165
Marrying was a way to declare our love

00:16:02.165 --> 00:16:06.151
as more a presence than an absence.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:06.151 --> 00:16:08.603
Marriage soon led us to children,

00:16:08.603 --> 00:16:10.210
and that meant new meanings

00:16:10.210 --> 00:16:14.462
and new identities, ours and theirs.

00:16:14.462 --> 00:16:17.389
I want my children to be happy,

00:16:17.389 --> 00:16:21.170
and I love them most achingly when they are sad.

00:16:21.170 --> 00:16:23.850
As a gay father, I can teach them

00:16:23.850 --> 00:16:26.527
to own what is wrong in their lives,

00:16:26.527 --> 00:16:28.320
but I believe that if I succeed

00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:30.640
in sheltering them from adversity,

00:16:30.640 --> 00:16:33.530
I will have failed as a parent.

00:16:33.530 --> 00:16:36.598
A Buddhist scholar I know once explained to me

00:16:36.598 --> 00:16:38.567
that Westerners mistakenly think

00:16:38.567 --> 00:16:40.922
that nirvana is what arrives

00:16:40.922 --> 00:16:43.665
when all your woe is behind you

00:16:43.665 --> 00:16:46.904
and you have only bliss to look forward to.

00:16:46.904 --> 00:16:49.069
But he said that would not be nirvana,

00:16:49.069 --> 00:16:50.579
because your bliss in the present

00:16:50.579 --> 00:16:54.578
would always be shadowed by the joy from the past.

00:16:54.578 --> 00:16:57.408
Nirvana, he said, is what you arrive at

00:16:57.408 --> 00:16:59.790
when you have only bliss to look forward to

00:16:59.790 --> 00:17:02.273
and find in what looked like sorrows

00:17:02.273 --> 00:17:05.126
the seedlings of your joy.

00:17:05.126 --> 00:17:06.837
And I sometimes wonder

00:17:06.837 --> 00:17:09.230
whether I could have found such fulfillment

00:17:09.230 --> 00:17:10.692
in marriage and children

00:17:10.692 --> 00:17:12.745
if they'd come more readily,

00:17:12.745 --> 00:17:16.770
if I'd been straight in my youth or were young now,

00:17:16.770 --> 00:17:20.192
in either of which cases this might be easier.

00:17:20.192 --> 00:17:21.771
Perhaps I could.

00:17:21.771 --> 00:17:24.108
Perhaps all the complex imagining I've done

00:17:24.108 --> 00:17:26.241
could have been applied to other topics.

00:17:26.241 --> 00:17:27.881
But if seeking meaning

00:17:27.881 --> 00:17:29.738
matters more than finding meaning,

00:17:29.738 --> 00:17:33.101
the question is not whether I'd be happier

00:17:33.101 --> 00:17:34.647
for having been bullied,

00:17:34.647 --> 00:17:36.319
but whether assigning meaning

00:17:36.319 --> 00:17:38.054
to those experiences

00:17:38.054 --> 00:17:40.470
has made me a better father.

00:17:40.470 --> 00:17:44.478
I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys,

00:17:44.478 --> 00:17:46.437
because I did not expect those joys

00:17:46.437 --> 00:17:48.965
to be ordinary to me.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:48.965 --> 00:17:50.782
I know many heterosexuals who have

00:17:50.782 --> 00:17:53.048
equally happy marriages and families,

00:17:53.048 --> 00:17:55.909
but gay marriage is so breathtakingly fresh,

00:17:55.909 --> 00:17:59.213
and gay families so exhilaratingly new,

00:17:59.213 --> 00:18:03.472
and I found meaning in that surprise.

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:03.472 --> 00:18:06.910
In October, it was my 50th birthday,

00:18:06.910 --> 00:18:10.128
and my family organized a party for me,

00:18:10.128 --> 00:18:11.617
and in the middle of it,

00:18:11.617 --> 00:18:13.034
my son said to my husband

00:18:13.034 --> 00:18:14.700
that he wanted to make a speech,

00:18:14.700 --> 00:18:15.694
and John said,

00:18:15.694 --> 00:18:20.316
"George, you can't make a speech. You're four."

00:18:20.316 --> 00:18:21.830
(Laughter)

00:18:21.830 --> 00:18:24.166
"Only Grandpa and Uncle David and I

00:18:24.166 --> 00:18:26.215
are going to make speeches tonight."

00:18:26.215 --> 00:18:29.120
But George insisted and insisted,

00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:32.123
and finally, John took him up to the microphone,

00:18:32.123 --> 00:18:35.179
and George said very loudly,

00:18:35.179 --> 00:18:37.623
"Ladies and gentlemen,

00:18:37.623 --> 00:18:40.205
may I have your attention please."

00:18:40.205 --> 00:18:42.920
And everyone turned around, startled.

00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:45.027
And George said,

00:18:45.027 --> 00:18:47.358
"I'm glad it's Daddy's birthday.

00:18:47.358 --> 00:18:50.799
I'm glad we all get cake.

00:18:50.799 --> 00:18:53.957
And daddy, if you were little,

00:18:53.957 --> 00:18:57.224
I'd be your friend."

NOTE Paragraph

00:18:57.770 --> 00:19:00.601
And I thought — Thank you.

00:19:00.601 --> 00:19:02.900
I thought that I was indebted

00:19:02.900 --> 00:19:04.695
even to Bobby Finkel,

00:19:04.695 --> 00:19:07.432
because all those earlier experiences

00:19:07.432 --> 00:19:09.800
were what had propelled me to this moment,

00:19:09.800 --> 00:19:12.332
and I was finally unconditionally grateful

00:19:12.332 --> 00:19:16.107
for a life I'd once have done anything to change.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:16.107 --> 00:19:18.152
The gay activist Harvey Milk

00:19:18.152 --> 00:19:20.680
was once asked by a younger gay man

00:19:20.680 --> 00:19:22.896
what he could do to help the movement,

00:19:22.896 --> 00:19:24.307
and Harvey Milk said,

00:19:24.307 --> 00:19:26.721
"Go out and tell someone."

00:19:26.721 --> 00:19:29.345
There's always somebody who wants to confiscate

00:19:29.345 --> 00:19:30.950
our humanity,

00:19:30.950 --> 00:19:33.738
and there are always stories that restore it.

00:19:33.738 --> 00:19:35.316
If we live out loud,

00:19:35.316 --> 00:19:36.982
we can trounce the hatred

00:19:36.982 --> 00:19:40.396
and expand everyone's lives.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:40.396 --> 00:19:44.020
Forge meaning. Build identity.

00:19:44.020 --> 00:19:46.093
Forge meaning.

00:19:46.093 --> 00:19:48.840
Build identity.

00:19:48.840 --> 00:19:50.638
And then invite the world

00:19:50.638 --> 00:19:52.334
to share your joy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:52.334 --> 00:19:55.580
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:55.580 --> 00:19:57.006
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:57.006 --> 00:20:00.083
Thank you. (Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:00.083 --> 00:20:04.182
Thank you. (Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:20:04.182 --> 00:20:08.182
Thank you. (Applause)