In search of the man who broke my neck
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0:06 - 0:09One year ago, I rented a car in Jerusalem
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0:09 - 0:12to go find a man I'd never met
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0:12 - 0:14but who had changed my life.
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0:14 - 0:17I didn't have a phone number to call to say I was coming.
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0:17 - 0:19I didn't have an exact address,
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0:19 - 0:22but I knew his name, Abed,
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0:22 - 0:26I knew that he lived in a town of 15,000, Kfar Kara,
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0:26 - 0:31and I knew that, 21 years before, just outside this holy city,
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0:31 - 0:33he broke my neck.
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0:33 - 0:38And so, on an overcast morning in January, I headed north
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0:38 - 0:42off in a silver Chevy to find a man and some peace.
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0:42 - 0:45The road dropped and I exited Jerusalem.
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0:45 - 0:48I then rounded the very bend where his blue truck,
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0:48 - 0:50heavy with four tons of floor tiles,
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0:50 - 0:53had borne down with great speed onto the back left corner
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0:53 - 0:56of the minibus where I sat.
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0:56 - 0:59I was then 19 years old.
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0:59 - 1:02I'd grown five inches and done some 20,000 pushups
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1:02 - 1:05in eight months, and the night before the crash,
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1:05 - 1:07I delighted in my new body,
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1:07 - 1:09playing basketball with friends
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1:09 - 1:11into the wee hours of a May morning.
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1:11 - 1:14I palmed the ball in my large right hand,
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1:14 - 1:18and when that hand reached the rim, I felt invincible.
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1:18 - 1:22I was off in the bus to get the pizza I'd won on the court.
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1:22 - 1:25I didn't see Abed coming.
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1:25 - 1:27From my seat, I was looking up at a stone town
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1:27 - 1:30on a hilltop, bright in the noontime sun,
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1:30 - 1:33when from behind there was a great bang,
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1:33 - 1:36as loud and violent as a bomb.
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1:36 - 1:38My head snapped back over my red seat.
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1:38 - 1:41My eardrum blew. My shoes flew off.
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1:41 - 1:44I flew too, my head bobbing on broken bones,
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1:44 - 1:49and when I landed, I was a quadriplegic.
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1:49 - 1:51Over the coming months, I learned to breathe on my own,
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1:51 - 1:54then to sit and to stand and to walk,
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1:54 - 1:57but my body was now divided vertically.
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1:57 - 2:00I was a hemiplegic, and back home in New York,
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2:00 - 2:05I used a wheelchair for four years, all through college.
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2:05 - 2:08College ended and I returned to Jerusalem for a year.
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2:08 - 2:11There I rose from my chair for good,
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2:11 - 2:14I leaned on my cane, and I looked back,
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2:14 - 2:17finding all from my fellow passengers in the bus
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2:17 - 2:20to photographs of the crash,
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2:20 - 2:23and when I saw this photograph,
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2:24 - 2:28I didn't see a bloody and unmoving body.
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2:28 - 2:31I saw the healthy bulk of a left deltoid,
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2:31 - 2:34and I mourned that it was lost,
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2:34 - 2:36mourned all I had not yet done,
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2:36 - 2:40but was now impossible.
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2:44 - 2:46It was then I read the testimony that Abed gave
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2:46 - 2:48the morning after the crash,
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2:48 - 2:52of driving down the right lane of a highway toward Jerusalem.
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2:52 - 2:55Reading his words, I welled with anger.
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2:55 - 2:59It was the first time I'd felt anger toward this man,
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2:59 - 3:02and it came from magical thinking.
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3:02 - 3:04On this xeroxed piece of paper,
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3:04 - 3:07the crash had not yet happened.
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3:07 - 3:09Abed could still turn his wheel left
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3:09 - 3:13so that I would see him whoosh by out my window
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3:13 - 3:15and I would remain whole.
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3:15 - 3:19"Be careful, Abed, look out. Slow down."
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3:19 - 3:21But Abed did not slow,
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3:21 - 3:25and on that xeroxed piece of paper, my neck again broke,
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3:25 - 3:29and again, I was left without anger.
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3:29 - 3:32I decided to find Abed,
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3:32 - 3:33and when I finally did,
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3:33 - 3:37he responded to my Hebrew hello which such nonchalance,
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3:37 - 3:39it seemed he'd been awaiting my phone call.
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3:39 - 3:41And maybe he had.
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3:41 - 3:45I didn't mention to Abed his prior driving record --
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3:45 - 3:4827 violations by the age of 25,
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3:48 - 3:53the last, his not shifting his truck into a low gear on that May day —
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3:53 - 3:55and I didn't mention my prior record --
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3:55 - 3:57the quadriplegia and the catheters,
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3:57 - 3:59the insecurity and the loss —
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3:59 - 4:02and when Abed went on about how hurt he was in the crash,
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4:02 - 4:04I didn't say that I knew from the police report
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4:04 - 4:07that he'd escaped serious injury.
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4:07 - 4:11I said I wanted to meet.
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4:11 - 4:14Abed said that I should call back in a few weeks,
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4:14 - 4:16and when I did, and a recording told me
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4:16 - 4:18that his number was disconnected,
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4:18 - 4:23I let Abed and the crash go.
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4:23 - 4:26Many years passed.
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4:26 - 4:30I walked with my cane and my ankle brace and a backpack
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4:30 - 4:33on trips in six continents.
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4:33 - 4:36I pitched overhand in a weekly softball game
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4:36 - 4:38that I started in Central Park,
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4:38 - 4:41and home in New York, I became a journalist and an author,
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4:41 - 4:45typing hundreds of thousands of words with one finger.
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4:45 - 4:48A friend pointed out to me that all of my big stories
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4:48 - 4:51mirrored my own, each centering on a life
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4:51 - 4:53that had changed in an instant,
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4:53 - 4:56owing, if not to a crash, then to an inheritance,
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4:56 - 4:58a swing of the bat, a click of the shutter, an arrest.
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4:58 - 5:02Each of us had a before and an after.
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5:02 - 5:06I'd been working through my lot after all.
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5:06 - 5:10Still, Abed was far from my mind, when last year,
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5:10 - 5:12I returned to Israel to write of the crash,
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5:12 - 5:15and the book I then wrote, "Half-Life,"
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5:15 - 5:18was nearly complete when I recognized
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5:18 - 5:20that I still wanted to meet Abed,
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5:20 - 5:23and finally I understood why:
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5:23 - 5:29to hear this man say two words: "I'm sorry."
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5:29 - 5:32People apologize for less.
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5:32 - 5:34And so I got a cop to confirm that Abed still lived
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5:34 - 5:37somewhere in his same town,
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5:37 - 5:40and I was now driving to it with a potted yellow rose in the back seat,
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5:40 - 5:44when suddenly flowers seemed a ridiculous offering.
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5:44 - 5:47But what to get the man who broke your fucking neck?
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5:47 - 5:51(Laughter)
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5:51 - 5:53I pulled into the town of Abu Ghosh,
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5:53 - 5:55and bought a brick of Turkish delight:
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5:55 - 6:00pistachios glued in rosewater. Better.
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6:00 - 6:03Back on Highway 1, I envisioned what awaited.
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6:03 - 6:07Abed would hug me. Abed would spit at me.
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6:07 - 6:11Abed would say, "I'm sorry."
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6:11 - 6:14I then began to wonder, as I had many times before,
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6:14 - 6:16how my life would have been different
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6:16 - 6:17had this man not injured me,
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6:17 - 6:21had my genes been fed a different helping of experience.
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6:21 - 6:23Who was I?
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6:23 - 6:26Was I who I had been before the crash,
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6:26 - 6:30before this road divided my life like the spine of an open book?
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6:30 - 6:32Was I what had been done to me?
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6:32 - 6:37Were all of us the results of things done to us, done for us,
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6:37 - 6:39the infidelity of a parent or spouse,
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6:39 - 6:41money inherited?
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6:41 - 6:45Were we instead our bodies, their inborn endowments and deficits?
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6:45 - 6:48It seemed that we could be nothing more than genes and experience,
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6:48 - 6:52but how to tease out the one from the other?
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6:52 - 6:55As Yeats put that same universal question,
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6:55 - 6:58"O body swayed to music, o brightening glance,
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6:58 - 7:04how can we know the dancer from the dance?"
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7:04 - 7:06I'd been driving for an hour
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7:06 - 7:10when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw my own brightening glance.
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7:10 - 7:14The light my eyes had carried for as long as they had been blue.
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7:14 - 7:17The predispositions and impulses that had propelled me
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7:17 - 7:20as a toddler to try and slip over a boat into a Chicago lake,
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7:20 - 7:21that had propelled me as a teen
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7:21 - 7:26to jump into wild Cape Cod Bay after a hurricane.
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7:26 - 7:28But I also saw in my reflection
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7:28 - 7:30that, had Abed not injured me,
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7:30 - 7:33I would now, in all likelihood, be a doctor
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7:33 - 7:37and a husband and a father.
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7:37 - 7:39I would be less mindful of time and of death,
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7:39 - 7:41and, oh, I would not be disabled,
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7:41 - 7:45would not suffer the thousand slings and arrows of my fortune.
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7:45 - 7:47The frequent furl of five fingers, the chips in my teeth
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7:47 - 7:50come from biting at all the many things
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7:50 - 7:52a solitary hand cannot open.
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7:52 - 7:58The dancer and the dance were hopelessly entwined.
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7:58 - 8:00It was approaching 11 when I exited right
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8:00 - 8:02toward Afula, and passed a large quarry
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8:02 - 8:05and was soon in Kfar Kara.
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8:05 - 8:07I felt a pang of nerves.
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8:07 - 8:11But Chopin was on the radio, seven beautiful mazurkas,
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8:11 - 8:13and I pulled into a lot by a gas station
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8:13 - 8:16to listen and to calm.
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8:16 - 8:19I'd been told that in an Arab town,
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8:19 - 8:21one need only mention the name of a local
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8:21 - 8:23and it will be recognized.
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8:23 - 8:25And I was mentioning Abed and myself,
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8:25 - 8:27noting deliberately that I was here in peace,
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8:27 - 8:30to the people in this town,
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8:30 - 8:33when I met Mohamed outside a post office at noon.
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8:33 - 8:35He listened to me.
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8:35 - 8:38You know, it was most often when speaking to people
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8:38 - 8:42that I wondered where I ended and my disability began,
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8:42 - 8:45for many people told me what they told no one else.
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8:45 - 8:47Many cried.
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8:47 - 8:50And one day, after a woman I met on the street did the same
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8:50 - 8:52and I later asked her why,
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8:52 - 8:54she told me that, best she could tell, her tears
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8:54 - 8:57had had something to do with my being happy and strong,
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8:57 - 9:00but vulnerable too.
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9:00 - 9:02I listened to her words. I suppose they were true.
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9:02 - 9:04I was me,
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9:04 - 9:06but I was now me despite a limp,
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9:06 - 9:11and that, I suppose, was what now made me, me.
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9:11 - 9:12Anyway, Mohamed told me
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9:12 - 9:15what perhaps he would not have told another stranger.
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9:15 - 9:19He led me to a house of cream stucco, then drove off.
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9:19 - 9:22And as I sat contemplating what to say,
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9:22 - 9:25a woman approached in a black shawl and black robe.
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9:25 - 9:28I stepped from my car and said "Shalom,"
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9:28 - 9:30and identified myself,
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9:30 - 9:31and she told me that her husband Abed
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9:31 - 9:34would be home from work in four hours.
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9:34 - 9:37Her Hebrew was not good, and she later confessed
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9:37 - 9:40that she thought that I had come to install the Internet.
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9:40 - 9:43(Laughter)
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9:43 - 9:47I drove off and returned at 4:30,
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9:47 - 9:48thankful to the minaret up the road
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9:48 - 9:50that helped me find my way back.
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9:50 - 9:52And as I approached the front door,
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9:52 - 9:56Abed saw me, my jeans and flannel and cane,
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9:56 - 10:01and I saw Abed, an average-looking man of average size.
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10:01 - 10:04He wore black and white: slippers over socks,
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10:04 - 10:06pilling sweatpants, a piebald sweater,
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10:06 - 10:09a striped ski cap pulled down to his forehead.
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10:09 - 10:12He'd been expecting me. Mohamed had phoned.
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10:12 - 10:16And so at once, we shook hands, and smiled,
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10:16 - 10:18and I gave him my gift,
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10:18 - 10:19and he told me I was a guest in his home,
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10:19 - 10:23and we sat beside one another on a fabric couch.
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10:23 - 10:26It was then that Abed resumed at once
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10:26 - 10:27the tale of woe he had begun over the phone
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10:27 - 10:3016 years before.
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10:30 - 10:34He'd just had surgery on his eyes, he said.
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10:34 - 10:36He had problems with his side and his legs too,
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10:36 - 10:38and, oh, he'd lost his teeth in the crash.
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10:38 - 10:41Did I wish to see him remove them?
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10:41 - 10:44Abed then rose and turned on the TV
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10:44 - 10:47so that I wouldn't be alone when he left the room,
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10:47 - 10:49and returned with polaroids of the crash
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10:49 - 10:52and his old driver's license.
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10:52 - 10:55"I was handsome," he said.
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10:55 - 10:58We looked down at his laminated mug.
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10:58 - 11:00Abed had been less handsome than substantial,
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11:00 - 11:04with thick black hair and a full face and a wide neck.
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11:04 - 11:07It was this youth who on May 16, 1990,
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11:07 - 11:09had broken two necks including mine,
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11:09 - 11:13and bruised one brain and taken one life.
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11:13 - 11:16Twenty-one years later, he was now thinner than his wife,
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11:16 - 11:17his skin slack on his face,
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11:17 - 11:20and looking at Abed looking at his young self,
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11:20 - 11:23I remembered looking at that photograph of my young self
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11:23 - 11:27after the crash, and recognized his longing.
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11:27 - 11:31"The crash changed both of our lives," I said.
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11:31 - 11:34Abed then showed me a picture of his mashed truck,
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11:34 - 11:36and said that the crash was the fault of a bus driver
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11:36 - 11:40in the left lane who did not let him pass.
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11:40 - 11:42I did not want to recap the crash with Abed.
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11:42 - 11:44I'd hoped for something simpler:
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11:44 - 11:49to exchange a Turkish dessert for two words and be on my way.
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11:49 - 11:51And so I didn't point out that in his own testimony
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11:51 - 11:53the morning after the crash,
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11:53 - 11:56Abed did not even mention the bus driver.
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11:56 - 11:59No, I was quiet. I was quiet because I had not come for truth.
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11:59 - 12:02I had come for remorse.
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12:02 - 12:04And so I now went looking for remorse
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12:04 - 12:07and threw truth under the bus.
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12:07 - 12:10"I understand," I said, "that the crash was not your fault,
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12:10 - 12:14but does it make you sad that others suffered?"
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12:14 - 12:17Abed spoke three quick words.
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12:17 - 12:20"Yes, I suffered."
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12:20 - 12:23Abed then told me why he'd suffered.
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12:23 - 12:26He'd lived an unholy life before the crash,
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12:26 - 12:29and so God had ordained the crash,
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12:29 - 12:33but now, he said, he was religious, and God was pleased.
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12:33 - 12:36It was then that God intervened:
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12:36 - 12:39news on the TV of a car wreck that hours before
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12:39 - 12:41had killed three people up north.
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12:41 - 12:44We looked up at the wreckage.
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12:44 - 12:47"Strange," I said.
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12:47 - 12:49"Strange," he agreed.
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12:49 - 12:52I had the thought that there, on Route 804,
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12:52 - 12:54there were perpetrators and victims,
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12:54 - 12:56dyads bound by a crash.
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12:56 - 12:58Some, as had Abed, would forget the date.
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12:58 - 13:02Some, as had I, would remember.
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13:02 - 13:05The report finished and Abed spoke.
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13:05 - 13:07"It is a pity," he said, "that the police
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13:07 - 13:12in this country are not tough enough on bad drivers."
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13:12 - 13:15I was baffled.
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13:15 - 13:18Abed had said something remarkable.
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13:18 - 13:21Did it point up the degree to which he'd absolved himself of the crash?
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13:21 - 13:23Was it evidence of guilt, an assertion
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13:23 - 13:26that he should have been put away longer?
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13:26 - 13:29He'd served six months in prison, lost his truck license for a decade.
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13:29 - 13:31I forgot my discretion.
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13:31 - 13:35"Um, Abed," I said,
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13:35 - 13:39"I thought you had a few driving issues before the crash."
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13:39 - 13:43"Well," he said, "I once went 60 in a 40."
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13:43 - 13:46And so 27 violations --
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13:46 - 13:49driving through a red light, driving at excessive speed,
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13:49 - 13:51driving on the wrong side of a barrier,
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13:51 - 13:53and finally, riding his brakes down that hill --
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13:53 - 13:56reduced to one.
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13:56 - 13:59And it was then I understood that no matter how stark the reality,
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13:59 - 14:02the human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.
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14:02 - 14:06The goat becomes the hero. The perpetrator becomes the victim.
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14:06 - 14:13It was then I understood that Abed would never apologize.
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14:13 - 14:16Abed and I sat with our coffee.
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14:16 - 14:19We'd spent 90 minutes together,
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14:19 - 14:21and he was now known to me.
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14:21 - 14:24He was not a particularly bad man
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14:24 - 14:26or a particularly good man.
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14:26 - 14:28He was a limited man
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14:28 - 14:31who'd found it within himself to be kind to me.
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14:31 - 14:33With a nod to Jewish custom,
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14:33 - 14:37he told me that I should live to be 120 years old.
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14:37 - 14:38But it was hard for me to relate to one who had
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14:38 - 14:42so completely washed his hands of his own calamitous doing,
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14:42 - 14:46to one whose life was so unexamined that he said
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14:46 - 14:51he thought two people had died in the crash.
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14:53 - 14:57There was much I wished to say to Abed.
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14:57 - 15:00I wished to tell him that, were he to acknowledge my disability,
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15:00 - 15:03it would be okay,
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15:03 - 15:04for people are wrong to marvel
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15:04 - 15:08at those like me who smile as we limp.
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15:08 - 15:11People don't know that they have lived through worse,
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15:11 - 15:15that problems of the heart hit with a force greater than a runaway truck,
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15:15 - 15:18that problems of the mind are greater still,
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15:18 - 15:22more injurious, than a hundred broken necks.
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15:22 - 15:25I wished to tell him that what makes most of us who we are
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15:25 - 15:26most of all
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15:26 - 15:28is not our minds and not our bodies
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15:28 - 15:30and not what happens to us,
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15:30 - 15:33but how we respond to what happens to us.
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15:33 - 15:36"This," wrote the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,
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15:36 - 15:38"is the last of the human freedoms:
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15:38 - 15:42to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."
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15:42 - 15:45I wished to tell him that not only paralyzers
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15:45 - 15:49and paralyzees must evolve, reconcile to reality,
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15:49 - 15:51but we all must --
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15:51 - 15:56the aging and the anxious and the divorced and the balding
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15:56 - 16:00and the bankrupt and everyone.
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16:00 - 16:02I wished to tell him that one does not have to say
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16:02 - 16:04that a bad thing is good,
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16:04 - 16:07that a crash is from God and so a crash is good,
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16:07 - 16:09a broken neck is good.
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16:09 - 16:12One can say that a bad thing sucks,
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16:12 - 16:16but that this natural world still has many glories.
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16:16 - 16:21I wished to tell him that, in the end, our mandate is clear:
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16:21 - 16:24We have to rise above bad fortune.
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16:24 - 16:27We have to be in the good and enjoy the good,
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16:27 - 16:33study and work and adventure and friendship -- oh, friendship --
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16:33 - 16:37and community and love.
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16:37 - 16:40But most of all, I wished to tell him
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16:40 - 16:42what Herman Melville wrote,
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16:42 - 16:45that "truly to enjoy bodily warmth,
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16:45 - 16:48some small part of you must be cold,
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16:48 - 16:50for there is no quality in this world
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16:50 - 16:54that is not what it is merely by contrast."
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16:54 - 16:56Yes, contrast.
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16:56 - 16:58If you are mindful of what you do not have,
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16:58 - 17:02you may be truly mindful of what you do have,
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17:02 - 17:06and if the gods are kind, you may truly enjoy what you have.
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17:06 - 17:08That is the one singular gift you may receive
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17:08 - 17:11if you suffer in any existential way.
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17:11 - 17:13You know death, and so may wake each morning
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17:13 - 17:15pulsing with ready life.
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17:15 - 17:17Some part of you is cold,
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17:17 - 17:20and so another part may truly enjoy what it is to be warm,
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17:20 - 17:23or even to be cold.
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17:23 - 17:25When one morning, years after the crash,
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17:25 - 17:28I stepped onto stone and the underside of my left foot
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17:28 - 17:32felt the flash of cold, nerves at last awake,
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17:32 - 17:37it was exhilarating, a gust of snow.
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17:37 - 17:40But I didn't say these things to Abed.
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17:40 - 17:45I told him only that he had killed one man, not two.
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17:45 - 17:49I told him the name of that man.
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17:49 - 17:53And then I said, "Goodbye."
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17:53 - 17:55Thank you.
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17:55 - 18:02(Applause)
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18:02 - 18:05Thanks a lot.
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18:05 - 18:09(Applause)
- Title:
- In search of the man who broke my neck
- Speaker:
- Joshua Prager
- Description:
-
When Joshua Prager was 19, a devastating bus accident left him a hemiplegic. He returned to Israel twenty years later to find the driver who turned his world upside down. In this mesmerizing tale of their meeting, Prager probes deep questions of nature, nurture, self-deception and destiny.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 18:30
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for In search of the man who broke my neck | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |