0:00:06.463,0:00:09.482
One year ago, I rented a car in Jerusalem

0:00:09.482,0:00:11.674
to go find a man I'd never met

0:00:11.674,0:00:13.810
but who had changed my life.

0:00:13.810,0:00:16.555
I didn't have a phone number to call to say I was coming.

0:00:16.555,0:00:19.056
I didn't have an exact address,

0:00:19.056,0:00:21.671
but I knew his name, Abed,

0:00:21.671,0:00:26.323
I knew that he lived in a town of 15,000, Kfar Kara,

0:00:26.323,0:00:31.134
and I knew that, 21 years before, just outside this holy city,

0:00:31.134,0:00:33.355
he broke my neck.

0:00:33.355,0:00:37.619
And so, on an overcast morning in January, I headed north

0:00:37.619,0:00:42.325
off in a silver Chevy to find a man and some peace.

0:00:42.325,0:00:45.197
The road dropped and I exited Jerusalem.

0:00:45.197,0:00:47.837
I then rounded the very bend where his blue truck,

0:00:47.837,0:00:50.163
heavy with four tons of floor tiles,

0:00:50.163,0:00:52.981
had borne down with great speed onto the back left corner

0:00:52.981,0:00:56.119
of the minibus where I sat.

0:00:56.119,0:00:58.773
I was then 19 years old.

0:00:58.773,0:01:02.100
I'd grown five inches and done some 20,000 pushups

0:01:02.100,0:01:05.044
in eight months, and the night before the crash,

0:01:05.044,0:01:07.210
I delighted in my new body,

0:01:07.210,0:01:09.351
playing basketball with friends

0:01:09.351,0:01:11.457
into the wee hours of a May morning.

0:01:11.457,0:01:14.152
I palmed the ball in my large right hand,

0:01:14.152,0:01:18.497
and when that hand reached the rim, I felt invincible.

0:01:18.497,0:01:22.343
I was off in the bus to get the pizza I'd won on the court.

0:01:22.343,0:01:24.891
I didn't see Abed coming.

0:01:24.891,0:01:27.263
From my seat, I was looking up at a stone town

0:01:27.263,0:01:30.249
on a hilltop, bright in the noontime sun,

0:01:30.249,0:01:32.725
when from behind there was a great bang,

0:01:32.725,0:01:35.642
as loud and violent as a bomb.

0:01:35.642,0:01:38.118
My head snapped back over my red seat.

0:01:38.118,0:01:41.204
My eardrum blew. My shoes flew off.

0:01:41.204,0:01:44.458
I flew too, my head bobbing on broken bones,

0:01:44.458,0:01:48.674
and when I landed, I was a quadriplegic.

0:01:48.674,0:01:51.095
Over the coming months, I learned to breathe on my own,

0:01:51.095,0:01:54.100
then to sit and to stand and to walk,

0:01:54.100,0:01:56.568
but my body was now divided vertically.

0:01:56.568,0:02:00.029
I was a hemiplegic, and back home in New York,

0:02:00.029,0:02:04.664
I used a wheelchair for four years, all through college.

0:02:04.664,0:02:08.142
College ended and I returned to Jerusalem for a year.

0:02:08.142,0:02:11.020
There I rose from my chair for good,

0:02:11.020,0:02:13.979
I leaned on my cane, and I looked back,

0:02:13.979,0:02:16.960
finding all from my fellow passengers in the bus

0:02:16.960,0:02:19.751
to photographs of the crash,

0:02:19.751,0:02:22.762
and when I saw this photograph,

0:02:24.208,0:02:27.569
I didn't see a bloody and unmoving body.

0:02:27.569,0:02:31.316
I saw the healthy bulk of a left deltoid,

0:02:31.316,0:02:33.632
and I mourned that it was lost,

0:02:33.632,0:02:36.018
mourned all I had not yet done,

0:02:36.018,0:02:39.910
but was now impossible.

0:02:43.897,0:02:46.274
It was then I read the testimony that Abed gave

0:02:46.274,0:02:48.490
the morning after the crash,

0:02:48.490,0:02:52.372
of driving down the right lane of a highway toward Jerusalem.

0:02:52.372,0:02:55.327
Reading his words, I welled with anger.

0:02:55.327,0:02:58.827
It was the first time I'd felt anger toward this man,

0:02:58.827,0:03:01.650
and it came from magical thinking.

0:03:01.650,0:03:03.773
On this xeroxed piece of paper,

0:03:03.773,0:03:07.326
the crash had not yet happened.

0:03:07.326,0:03:09.415
Abed could still turn his wheel left

0:03:09.415,0:03:12.799
so that I would see him whoosh by out my window

0:03:12.799,0:03:15.241
and I would remain whole.

0:03:15.241,0:03:19.099
"Be careful, Abed, look out. Slow down."

0:03:19.099,0:03:21.412
But Abed did not slow,

0:03:21.412,0:03:25.220
and on that xeroxed piece of paper, my neck again broke,

0:03:25.220,0:03:29.223
and again, I was left without anger.

0:03:29.223,0:03:31.623
I decided to find Abed,

0:03:31.623,0:03:33.363
and when I finally did,

0:03:33.363,0:03:36.916
he responded to my Hebrew hello which such nonchalance,

0:03:36.916,0:03:39.091
it seemed he'd been awaiting my phone call.

0:03:39.091,0:03:41.465
And maybe he had.

0:03:41.465,0:03:44.638
I didn't mention to Abed his prior driving record --

0:03:44.638,0:03:48.419
27 violations by the age of 25,

0:03:48.419,0:03:53.110
the last, his not shifting his truck into a low gear on that May day —

0:03:53.110,0:03:55.203
and I didn't mention my prior record --

0:03:55.203,0:03:56.911
the quadriplegia and the catheters,

0:03:56.911,0:03:59.432
the insecurity and the loss —

0:03:59.432,0:04:02.124
and when Abed went on about how hurt he was in the crash,

0:04:02.124,0:04:04.484
I didn't say that I knew from the police report

0:04:04.484,0:04:07.187
that he'd escaped serious injury.

0:04:07.187,0:04:10.920
I said I wanted to meet.

0:04:10.920,0:04:13.563
Abed said that I should call back in a few weeks,

0:04:13.563,0:04:16.139
and when I did, and a recording told me

0:04:16.139,0:04:18.412
that his number was disconnected,

0:04:18.412,0:04:23.388
I let Abed and the crash go.

0:04:23.388,0:04:25.618
Many years passed.

0:04:25.618,0:04:29.887
I walked with my cane and my ankle brace and a backpack

0:04:29.887,0:04:32.557
on trips in six continents.

0:04:32.557,0:04:35.996
I pitched overhand in a weekly softball game

0:04:35.996,0:04:38.224
that I started in Central Park,

0:04:38.224,0:04:41.137
and home in New York, I became a journalist and an author,

0:04:41.137,0:04:45.223
typing hundreds of thousands of words with one finger.

0:04:45.223,0:04:47.730
A friend pointed out to me that all of my big stories

0:04:47.730,0:04:50.622
mirrored my own, each centering on a life

0:04:50.622,0:04:52.982
that had changed in an instant,

0:04:52.982,0:04:55.803
owing, if not to a crash, then to an inheritance,

0:04:55.803,0:04:58.436
a swing of the bat, a click of the shutter, an arrest.

0:04:58.436,0:05:02.410
Each of us had a before and an after.

0:05:02.410,0:05:05.513
I'd been working through my lot after all.

0:05:05.513,0:05:09.686
Still, Abed was far from my mind, when last year,

0:05:09.686,0:05:12.476
I returned to Israel to write of the crash,

0:05:12.476,0:05:15.108
and the book I then wrote, "Half-Life,"

0:05:15.108,0:05:18.056
was nearly complete when I recognized

0:05:18.056,0:05:20.493
that I still wanted to meet Abed,

0:05:20.493,0:05:23.400
and finally I understood why:

0:05:23.400,0:05:28.729
to hear this man say two words: "I'm sorry."

0:05:28.729,0:05:31.647
People apologize for less.

0:05:31.647,0:05:34.459
And so I got a cop to confirm that Abed still lived

0:05:34.459,0:05:36.676
somewhere in his same town,

0:05:36.676,0:05:39.748
and I was now driving to it with a potted yellow rose in the back seat,

0:05:39.748,0:05:43.741
when suddenly flowers seemed a ridiculous offering.

0:05:43.741,0:05:47.123
But what to get the man who broke your fucking neck?

0:05:47.123,0:05:51.205
(Laughter)

0:05:51.205,0:05:53.351
I pulled into the town of Abu Ghosh,

0:05:53.351,0:05:55.410
and bought a brick of Turkish delight:

0:05:55.410,0:05:59.599
pistachios glued in rosewater. Better.

0:05:59.599,0:06:03.012
Back on Highway 1, I envisioned what awaited.

0:06:03.012,0:06:07.194
Abed would hug me. Abed would spit at me.

0:06:07.194,0:06:11.391
Abed would say, "I'm sorry."

0:06:11.391,0:06:14.417
I then began to wonder, as I had many times before,

0:06:14.417,0:06:15.655
how my life would have been different

0:06:15.655,0:06:17.061
had this man not injured me,

0:06:17.061,0:06:20.942
had my genes been fed a different helping of experience.

0:06:20.942,0:06:23.155
Who was I?

0:06:23.155,0:06:25.972
Was I who I had been before the crash,

0:06:25.972,0:06:30.033
before this road divided my life like the spine of an open book?

0:06:30.033,0:06:32.322
Was I what had been done to me?

0:06:32.322,0:06:36.715
Were all of us the results of things done to us, done for us,

0:06:36.715,0:06:39.055
the infidelity of a parent or spouse,

0:06:39.055,0:06:41.242
money inherited?

0:06:41.242,0:06:45.380
Were we instead our bodies, their inborn endowments and deficits?

0:06:45.380,0:06:48.345
It seemed that we could be nothing more than genes and experience,

0:06:48.345,0:06:51.835
but how to tease out the one from the other?

0:06:51.835,0:06:54.677
As Yeats put that same universal question,

0:06:54.677,0:06:57.871
"O body swayed to music, o brightening glance,

0:06:57.871,0:07:04.186
how can we know the dancer from the dance?"

0:07:04.186,0:07:06.445
I'd been driving for an hour

0:07:06.445,0:07:10.172
when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw my own brightening glance.

0:07:10.172,0:07:13.981
The light my eyes had carried for as long as they had been blue.

0:07:13.981,0:07:16.539
The predispositions and impulses that had propelled me

0:07:16.539,0:07:19.749
as a toddler to try and slip over a boat into a Chicago lake,

0:07:19.749,0:07:21.389
that had propelled me as a teen

0:07:21.389,0:07:25.810
to jump into wild Cape Cod Bay after a hurricane.

0:07:25.810,0:07:28.400
But I also saw in my reflection

0:07:28.400,0:07:30.247
that, had Abed not injured me,

0:07:30.247,0:07:33.234
I would now, in all likelihood, be a doctor

0:07:33.234,0:07:36.757
and a husband and a father.

0:07:36.757,0:07:39.235
I would be less mindful of time and of death,

0:07:39.235,0:07:41.056
and, oh, I would not be disabled,

0:07:41.056,0:07:44.564
would not suffer the thousand slings and arrows of my fortune.

0:07:44.564,0:07:47.219
The frequent furl of five fingers, the chips in my teeth

0:07:47.219,0:07:49.565
come from biting at all the many things

0:07:49.565,0:07:52.346
a solitary hand cannot open.

0:07:52.346,0:07:57.785
The dancer and the dance were hopelessly entwined.

0:07:57.785,0:07:59.911
It was approaching 11 when I exited right

0:07:59.911,0:08:02.070
toward Afula, and passed a large quarry

0:08:02.070,0:08:04.523
and was soon in Kfar Kara.

0:08:04.523,0:08:06.986
I felt a pang of nerves.

0:08:06.986,0:08:10.789
But Chopin was on the radio, seven beautiful mazurkas,

0:08:10.789,0:08:13.019
and I pulled into a lot by a gas station

0:08:13.019,0:08:16.360
to listen and to calm.

0:08:16.360,0:08:18.592
I'd been told that in an Arab town,

0:08:18.592,0:08:20.797
one need only mention the name of a local

0:08:20.797,0:08:23.077
and it will be recognized.

0:08:23.077,0:08:25.087
And I was mentioning Abed and myself,

0:08:25.087,0:08:27.445
noting deliberately that I was here in peace,

0:08:27.445,0:08:29.581
to the people in this town,

0:08:29.581,0:08:32.864
when I met Mohamed outside a post office at noon.

0:08:32.864,0:08:35.306
He listened to me.

0:08:35.306,0:08:38.130
You know, it was most often when speaking to people

0:08:38.130,0:08:42.070
that I wondered where I ended and my disability began,

0:08:42.070,0:08:44.948
for many people told me what they told no one else.

0:08:44.948,0:08:47.254
Many cried.

0:08:47.254,0:08:49.898
And one day, after a woman I met on the street did the same

0:08:49.898,0:08:51.794
and I later asked her why,

0:08:51.794,0:08:53.768
she told me that, best she could tell, her tears

0:08:53.768,0:08:57.044
had had something to do with my being happy and strong,

0:08:57.044,0:08:59.731
but vulnerable too.

0:08:59.731,0:09:02.014
I listened to her words. I suppose they were true.

0:09:02.014,0:09:04.276
I was me,

0:09:04.276,0:09:06.430
but I was now me despite a limp,

0:09:06.430,0:09:10.592
and that, I suppose, was what now made me, me.

0:09:10.592,0:09:12.394
Anyway, Mohamed told me

0:09:12.394,0:09:15.175
what perhaps he would not have told another stranger.

0:09:15.175,0:09:19.286
He led me to a house of cream stucco, then drove off.

0:09:19.286,0:09:21.984
And as I sat contemplating what to say,

0:09:21.984,0:09:25.418
a woman approached in a black shawl and black robe.

0:09:25.418,0:09:27.798
I stepped from my car and said "Shalom,"

0:09:27.798,0:09:29.835
and identified myself,

0:09:29.835,0:09:31.264
and she told me that her husband Abed

0:09:31.264,0:09:34.116
would be home from work in four hours.

0:09:34.116,0:09:36.632
Her Hebrew was not good, and she later confessed

0:09:36.632,0:09:39.772
that she thought that I had come to install the Internet.

0:09:39.772,0:09:43.496
(Laughter)

0:09:43.496,0:09:46.521
I drove off and returned at 4:30,

0:09:46.521,0:09:47.797
thankful to the minaret up the road

0:09:47.797,0:09:50.331
that helped me find my way back.

0:09:50.331,0:09:52.428
And as I approached the front door,

0:09:52.428,0:09:55.853
Abed saw me, my jeans and flannel and cane,

0:09:55.853,0:10:00.639
and I saw Abed, an average-looking man of average size.

0:10:00.639,0:10:03.662
He wore black and white: slippers over socks,

0:10:03.662,0:10:05.761
pilling sweatpants, a piebald sweater,

0:10:05.761,0:10:09.073
a striped ski cap pulled down to his forehead.

0:10:09.073,0:10:11.570
He'd been expecting me. Mohamed had phoned.

0:10:11.570,0:10:15.853
And so at once, we shook hands, and smiled,

0:10:15.853,0:10:17.940
and I gave him my gift,

0:10:17.940,0:10:19.331
and he told me I was a guest in his home,

0:10:19.331,0:10:22.744
and we sat beside one another on a fabric couch.

0:10:22.744,0:10:25.505
It was then that Abed resumed at once

0:10:25.505,0:10:27.361
the tale of woe he had begun over the phone

0:10:27.361,0:10:30.325
16 years before.

0:10:30.325,0:10:33.630
He'd just had surgery on his eyes, he said.

0:10:33.630,0:10:35.827
He had problems with his side and his legs too,

0:10:35.827,0:10:38.369
and, oh, he'd lost his teeth in the crash.

0:10:38.369,0:10:41.340
Did I wish to see him remove them?

0:10:41.340,0:10:43.870
Abed then rose and turned on the TV

0:10:43.870,0:10:46.728
so that I wouldn't be alone when he left the room,

0:10:46.728,0:10:48.967
and returned with polaroids of the crash

0:10:48.967,0:10:51.577
and his old driver's license.

0:10:51.577,0:10:55.384
"I was handsome," he said.

0:10:55.384,0:10:57.562
We looked down at his laminated mug.

0:10:57.562,0:11:00.318
Abed had been less handsome than substantial,

0:11:00.318,0:11:04.110
with thick black hair and a full face and a wide neck.

0:11:04.110,0:11:07.047
It was this youth who on May 16, 1990,

0:11:07.047,0:11:09.196
had broken two necks including mine,

0:11:09.196,0:11:13.144
and bruised one brain and taken one life.

0:11:13.144,0:11:15.743
Twenty-one years later, he was now thinner than his wife,

0:11:15.743,0:11:17.492
his skin slack on his face,

0:11:17.492,0:11:20.223
and looking at Abed looking at his young self,

0:11:20.223,0:11:22.606
I remembered looking at that photograph of my young self

0:11:22.606,0:11:26.932
after the crash, and recognized his longing.

0:11:26.932,0:11:31.049
"The crash changed both of our lives," I said.

0:11:31.049,0:11:33.777
Abed then showed me a picture of his mashed truck,

0:11:33.777,0:11:36.365
and said that the crash was the fault of a bus driver

0:11:36.365,0:11:39.538
in the left lane who did not let him pass.

0:11:39.538,0:11:42.260
I did not want to recap the crash with Abed.

0:11:42.260,0:11:44.029
I'd hoped for something simpler:

0:11:44.029,0:11:48.834
to exchange a Turkish dessert for two words and be on my way.

0:11:48.834,0:11:51.423
And so I didn't point out that in his own testimony

0:11:51.423,0:11:53.469
the morning after the crash,

0:11:53.469,0:11:55.854
Abed did not even mention the bus driver.

0:11:55.854,0:11:59.218
No, I was quiet. I was quiet because I had not come for truth.

0:11:59.218,0:12:02.226
I had come for remorse.

0:12:02.226,0:12:04.382
And so I now went looking for remorse

0:12:04.382,0:12:06.667
and threw truth under the bus.

0:12:06.667,0:12:09.793
"I understand," I said, "that the crash was not your fault,

0:12:09.793,0:12:14.182
but does it make you sad that others suffered?"

0:12:14.182,0:12:16.577
Abed spoke three quick words.

0:12:16.577,0:12:20.369
"Yes, I suffered."

0:12:20.369,0:12:23.305
Abed then told me why he'd suffered.

0:12:23.305,0:12:26.444
He'd lived an unholy life before the crash,

0:12:26.444,0:12:28.773
and so God had ordained the crash,

0:12:28.773,0:12:32.596
but now, he said, he was religious, and God was pleased.

0:12:32.596,0:12:35.737
It was then that God intervened:

0:12:35.737,0:12:38.511
news on the TV of a car wreck that hours before

0:12:38.511,0:12:41.283
had killed three people up north.

0:12:41.283,0:12:43.656
We looked up at the wreckage.

0:12:43.656,0:12:46.677
"Strange," I said.

0:12:46.677,0:12:49.462
"Strange," he agreed.

0:12:49.462,0:12:52.157
I had the thought that there, on Route 804,

0:12:52.157,0:12:54.287
there were perpetrators and victims,

0:12:54.287,0:12:56.023
dyads bound by a crash.

0:12:56.023,0:12:58.484
Some, as had Abed, would forget the date.

0:12:58.484,0:13:01.694
Some, as had I, would remember.

0:13:01.694,0:13:04.819
The report finished and Abed spoke.

0:13:04.819,0:13:07.192
"It is a pity," he said, "that the police

0:13:07.192,0:13:12.086
in this country are not tough enough on bad drivers."

0:13:12.086,0:13:15.114
I was baffled.

0:13:15.114,0:13:17.893
Abed had said something remarkable.

0:13:17.893,0:13:21.359
Did it point up the degree to which he'd absolved himself of the crash?

0:13:21.359,0:13:23.261
Was it evidence of guilt, an assertion

0:13:23.261,0:13:25.644
that he should have been put away longer?

0:13:25.644,0:13:29.256
He'd served six months in prison, lost his truck license for a decade.

0:13:29.256,0:13:31.282
I forgot my discretion.

0:13:31.282,0:13:34.726
"Um, Abed," I said,

0:13:34.726,0:13:38.957
"I thought you had a few driving issues before the crash."

0:13:38.957,0:13:42.918
"Well," he said, "I once went 60 in a 40."

0:13:42.918,0:13:46.319
And so 27 violations --

0:13:46.319,0:13:49.024
driving through a red light, driving at excessive speed,

0:13:49.024,0:13:51.006
driving on the wrong side of a barrier,

0:13:51.006,0:13:53.046
and finally, riding his brakes down that hill --

0:13:53.046,0:13:55.504
reduced to one.

0:13:55.504,0:13:58.991
And it was then I understood that no matter how stark the reality,

0:13:58.991,0:14:02.106
the human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.

0:14:02.106,0:14:06.023
The goat becomes the hero. The perpetrator becomes the victim.

0:14:06.023,0:14:12.727
It was then I understood that Abed would never apologize.

0:14:12.727,0:14:16.023
Abed and I sat with our coffee.

0:14:16.023,0:14:18.815
We'd spent 90 minutes together,

0:14:18.815,0:14:21.177
and he was now known to me.

0:14:21.177,0:14:23.545
He was not a particularly bad man

0:14:23.545,0:14:25.878
or a particularly good man.

0:14:25.878,0:14:28.036
He was a limited man

0:14:28.036,0:14:31.066
who'd found it within himself to be kind to me.

0:14:31.066,0:14:32.576
With a nod to Jewish custom,

0:14:32.576,0:14:36.523
he told me that I should live to be 120 years old.

0:14:36.523,0:14:38.344
But it was hard for me to relate to one who had

0:14:38.344,0:14:41.642
so completely washed his hands of his own calamitous doing,

0:14:41.642,0:14:46.006
to one whose life was so unexamined that he said

0:14:46.006,0:14:50.781
he thought two people had died in the crash.

0:14:53.012,0:14:56.636
There was much I wished to say to Abed.

0:14:56.636,0:15:00.341
I wished to tell him that, were he to acknowledge my disability,

0:15:00.341,0:15:02.516
it would be okay,

0:15:02.516,0:15:04.314
for people are wrong to marvel

0:15:04.314,0:15:07.556
at those like me who smile as we limp.

0:15:07.556,0:15:11.492
People don't know that they have lived through worse,

0:15:11.492,0:15:15.154
that problems of the heart hit with a force greater than a runaway truck,

0:15:15.154,0:15:17.505
that problems of the mind are greater still,

0:15:17.505,0:15:21.681
more injurious, than a hundred broken necks.

0:15:21.681,0:15:24.531
I wished to tell him that what makes most of us who we are

0:15:24.531,0:15:26.032
most of all

0:15:26.032,0:15:28.465
is not our minds and not our bodies

0:15:28.465,0:15:30.273
and not what happens to us,

0:15:30.273,0:15:33.135
but how we respond to what happens to us.

0:15:33.135,0:15:35.713
"This," wrote the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,

0:15:35.713,0:15:37.530
"is the last of the human freedoms:

0:15:37.530,0:15:42.430
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

0:15:42.430,0:15:45.254
I wished to tell him that not only paralyzers

0:15:45.254,0:15:49.125
and paralyzees must evolve, reconcile to reality,

0:15:49.125,0:15:51.102
but we all must --

0:15:51.102,0:15:55.988
the aging and the anxious and the divorced and the balding

0:15:55.988,0:15:59.833
and the bankrupt and everyone.

0:15:59.833,0:16:02.438
I wished to tell him that one does not have to say

0:16:02.438,0:16:04.454
that a bad thing is good,

0:16:04.454,0:16:07.002
that a crash is from God and so a crash is good,

0:16:07.002,0:16:08.693
a broken neck is good.

0:16:08.693,0:16:11.953
One can say that a bad thing sucks,

0:16:11.953,0:16:16.075
but that this natural world still has many glories.

0:16:16.075,0:16:21.101
I wished to tell him that, in the end, our mandate is clear:

0:16:21.101,0:16:24.328
We have to rise above bad fortune.

0:16:24.328,0:16:27.354
We have to be in the good and enjoy the good,

0:16:27.354,0:16:33.238
study and work and adventure and friendship -- oh, friendship --

0:16:33.238,0:16:37.007
and community and love.

0:16:37.007,0:16:39.766
But most of all, I wished to tell him

0:16:39.766,0:16:42.135
what Herman Melville wrote,

0:16:42.135,0:16:45.062
that "truly to enjoy bodily warmth,

0:16:45.062,0:16:48.119
some small part of you must be cold,

0:16:48.119,0:16:50.422
for there is no quality in this world

0:16:50.422,0:16:53.714
that is not what it is merely by contrast."

0:16:53.714,0:16:56.155
Yes, contrast.

0:16:56.155,0:16:58.494
If you are mindful of what you do not have,

0:16:58.494,0:17:01.722
you may be truly mindful of what you do have,

0:17:01.722,0:17:05.616
and if the gods are kind, you may truly enjoy what you have.

0:17:05.616,0:17:08.045
That is the one singular gift you may receive

0:17:08.045,0:17:11.016
if you suffer in any existential way.

0:17:11.016,0:17:13.345
You know death, and so may wake each morning

0:17:13.345,0:17:15.375
pulsing with ready life.

0:17:15.375,0:17:16.970
Some part of you is cold,

0:17:16.970,0:17:20.469
and so another part may truly enjoy what it is to be warm,

0:17:20.469,0:17:23.391
or even to be cold.

0:17:23.391,0:17:25.415
When one morning, years after the crash,

0:17:25.415,0:17:28.198
I stepped onto stone and the underside of my left foot

0:17:28.198,0:17:31.661
felt the flash of cold, nerves at last awake,

0:17:31.661,0:17:36.948
it was exhilarating, a gust of snow.

0:17:36.948,0:17:40.184
But I didn't say these things to Abed.

0:17:40.184,0:17:44.985
I told him only that he had killed one man, not two.

0:17:44.985,0:17:49.459
I told him the name of that man.

0:17:49.459,0:17:53.272
And then I said, "Goodbye."

0:17:53.272,0:17:55.189
Thank you.

0:17:55.189,0:18:01.924
(Applause)

0:18:01.924,0:18:04.660
Thanks a lot.

0:18:04.660,0:18:08.660
(Applause)