Translator: Leonardo Silva
Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner I was on a road trip recently
with one of my best friends, and we were listening
to The Tim Ferriss Show. It's a podcast that's been downloaded
about 80 million times, and he wrote the New York Times
best-selling book "The 4-Hour Workweek." So, Tim is talking to Vince Vaughn,
the actor of "Wedding Crashers" fame, on the podcast, and they're talking
about how Tim didn't learn to swim until he was about 30 years old because, as a kid, he was bullied
at summer camp and he almost drowned, and as a result, he was deeply
traumatized and terrified of water and he just never learned to swim. And this shamed him,
he felt really bad about that. But he did eventually learn to swim,
and he talked about it. And on this particular podcast
that I was listening to, Vince was telling Tim how inspired
he was by Tim's story of overcoming his trauma
and learning to swim. And I'm listening
to this story with my friend, driving in a car somewhere
on I-90, in South Dakota, and I say out loud, "Ooh, poor Tim Ferriss... He was bullied as a kid
and he never learned to swim, but then he did
and that was so inspiring!" (Laughter) I said that out loud. (Laughter) My friend looks at me like, "You're a horrible person." (Laughter) And I'm like, "Yeah... I got nothing." (Laughter) So we just kind of turned off the podcast and sat in uncomfortable silence
for a few minutes. (Laughter) But it really bugged me, and when things really bug me,
I need to, like, lean into them and get in there and figure out why. So, a couple days later,
maybe a week later or something, I was talking with my counselor, and we were trying to figure out
why I was so bothered by this. And we came to the
conclusion that I got mad because not only
did Tim overcome his trauma and talk about it publicly, when he did, he was met with compassion, his pain was validated and, even better, someone thought it was inspiring. But that still wasn't good enough for me. I was like, "But bullying? Really?
That's like an acceptable trauma." And what I mean by an acceptable trauma is acceptable traumas are things
that people can relate to. They're things that when you say them
out loud, people know how to respond, something like a dog dying,
or losing a parent, or getting bullied as a kid. We all know that those things suck,
and we know that we're going to go, "Oh God, I'm sorry.
That must have been really hard." But if those are acceptable traumas,
What are unacceptable traumas? Unacceptable traumas are the things that
people can't or don't want to relate to, that when you say them out loud, they recoil, they grimace, they get uncomfortable, visibly. You can see it in their face. So, when I tell people
that my dad killed himself, people tend to get
a little bit uncomfortable, and I can see them squirming. And when I tell them that,
imagine what they look like when I tell them
that I was raped when I was 16, or that I was first sexually
abused when I was five. So that feeling that you might
be having right now, like, "Errr.... I don't like that," that's a reaction to stigma. Stigma is a badge of shame, and sometimes it's
a literal badge of shame, like an armband that a certain group
of people are forced to wear, or a separate bathroom that a certain
group of people are forced to use, and other times it's more figurative, it's more social. So, if we're having
a conversation with someone and they bring up a subject
that we're not comfortable with, we just don't talk about it, we force that person to just kind of live
with that shame on their own, and they just have to kind of
suck it up and deal with it. Sexual abuse, rape, mental illness and suicide. (Laughter) These are my unacceptable
stigmatized traumas. And they're horrible,
I would not wish them on anyone, but they're mine and I can't undo them,
as much as I've tried, believe me. I have tried and just be
like, "La la la... La la la la la." It doesn't work that way. So, that reaction that I had
to The Tim Ferriss Show, where I was all judgy and angry and weird, that was my trauma
and my shame popping up, like some weird trauma whack-a-mole game, like, "I'm perfect, Im perfect,"
but no, you're not, because trauma just pops up
at weird places and embarrasses you and makes you sound like a jerk. And I started thinking
about my reaction to that, and as I was working through it, I was thinking about how I have this need
to just pretend that I'm perfect. And in Tim Ferriss's case, his trauma seemed
like it wasn't as bad as mine. I got out this measuring stick and I said, "His trauma isn't as bad as mine." But yet, when he talks about it,
he gets compassion. And when I talk about mine,
overwhelmingly, in the past, it hasn't necessarily been
a compassionate response, where people are like, "Oh, you know,
that was so inspiring that you survived all that gross stuff." It's like, "Oh, I don't want to talk
about it! Please stop talking about it." So, I learned to not talk about it, and I learned to be as perfect
as I could possibly be, and I pursued perfection
like it was my job and I wore that perfection-like armor, and I needed you to see
the person that I wanted you to see, who I thought was perfect, because underneath
that armor of perfection, I was a hot mess. So I'm working through this
and I start to think about it, like, "Why do I need to be perfect?" Why is it that we have to only show
this happy, shiny side of ourselves and deny that there's any problems, and oh, if there is,
like, a small problem, it's OK to talk about it and retrospect,
like, after it's done, and so we can all be like, "Yay,
you survived and that's so inspiring"? But - it's like the Hollywood ending, we can't deal with something
that's not wrapped up with a bow. So, like in real life, when the protagonist dies
alone in the Arctic, maybe gets eaten by a bear
or has some other tragic ending, in the Hollywood version, he marries a sweetie
and they live happily ever after. And I started to refer to this phenomenon
as the cult of happiness. So the cult of happiness
has been around forever. It's just that now, with social media, we can project how perfect
we are to everybody, so that I think that I'm the only person that's, like, sitting at home,
eating Pringles, while everybody else is like in Italy, posting gorgeous photos of themselves
with inspirational quotes, and all these things, and there's like 17 hashtags, and it's like "#blessed," "#gratitude," (Laughter) like, "#wisdom." It's like, "Oh, thank God
the universe is looking out for me on my vacation to Italy." (Laughter) But it really bugs me
because I don't get it. Like, I love Italy. Rome is my favorite city,
which I didn't think it would be, but it is, actually, my favorite city. I mean, I love the happy stuff, but for me, I also have
this, like, massive dark side, and I drag it around with me everywhere. And I wish I could just
get rid of it, but I can't, and I feel like if I were to post all
these happy, amazing things on Instagram, I'd just be an impostor. Because, you know, going back
to that whack-a-mole thing, I'm like, "Hey, look at me, I'm in Italy," and then it's like
these trauma things pop up and I need to just whack them down. So, meanwhile, I'm playing
this whack-a-mole and chasing perfection
and pretending I'm perfect, and meanwhile, my shame
and my trauma are just festering, like dog poop, in a Smith's bag, (Laughter) in a Ziploc bag, in a Mason jar, that I, you know, just screw
with the top on as tight as I can, and then I just carry it around
with me and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm just holding
a Mason jar of poop, no big deal." (Laughter) Pay no attention,
look away, avert your gaze. There's no jar of poop here
that I'm carrying around. Just festering. But what if I had taken that crap, and instead of locking it up
and carrying it around with me and trying to pretend it's not there, what if I had just laid it out in the sun, and let the wind and the rain
and the light transform it? It might not have been gone completely,
but it would have changed, and it would have become lighter. It would have been transformed. Robert Frost wrote,
"The best way out is always through." And I have clung to that through
many, many dark nights of the soul. And during trying to work
through all this stuff, there was a lot of, like, "Why me?" Like, "Why do I have to have all these
horrible things happen to me, when everybody else is, like,
in Italy being blessed?" Stuff like, "Oh, I'm just
going to eat my Pringles." And so, this girlfriend of mine
that I was on the road trip with, we're still friends, even though she still
kind of thinks I'm a horrible person. She sends me this quote that says, "What if the word 'victim'
could be redefined as something closer to 'hero,' so that the path some have tread
would spare others from the same?" And I thought, "Okay.
I haven't heard that one before. 'Hero,' not a 'victim,' not a 'survivor.' I don't know why
I hate that word, I just do. But a hero. So, if I'm a hero,
I should have a superpower. And if I have a superpower, I guess it's going to be
to defeat stigma." And as a self-proclaimed superhero, my first act in my fight against stigma is to introduce an alternative
to the cult of happiness. In the cult of compassion, all of those bright, shiny,
happy things are good, bring them on over,
totally cool, we love it, but all of those ugly,
sticky, messy things that we kind of keep out
of the cult of happiness, those are accepted too, and they're honored,
and they're supported, and they're talked through and they're transformed into something that's maybe a little bit closer
to authentic happiness. So, I can tell my story tonight
because I've done a lot of work since I moved to Jackson Hole
three and a half years ago, when I just packed it all up
and decided to live the dream, because it is a dream, right? I've done a lot of work, and so, to spare you guys - maybe you're not going to do
as much work as I would have done, but maybe you've got some work to do - But to spare you
maybe a little bit of time, I can tell you what I learned
from all of this. Listening, bearing witness
to another's suffering, is not a passive practice. It's an act of healing. And I have been healed by some of the people
in this room tonight, who listened to my story. They bore witness to my suffering, they didn't reject me,
they didn't tell me I was going to be OK. They just listened, and they didn't judge. It works, the cult of compassion works. And all of us here can be heroes. We can work together to defeat stigma
and we can help people heal. All it takes is an open mind,
or an open heart if you're right-brained, to shut your mouth and listen. And by listening, we can
all together change the world, because the truth is we are all broken. It's just a question
of how much and where. And as Leonard Cohen famously sang, "There is a crack in everything.
It's where the light gets in." Thanks for listening. (Applause) (Cheers)
