The Most Important Question

Can you ask it?

I know it’s hard to make the events in Paris part of your show if you work for a music-based station.

9/11 was different, felt different, but even then, music stations struggled with the question of how to deal with overwhelming grief and anger.

That’s why, when I saw this quote, I thought perhaps I had found a way:

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, whom would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?” ~ Stephen Levine

Still feel that’s too morbid a way to introduce the topic?

How about taking out “…were going to die soon and…”?

It becomes “If you had only one phone call you could make, whom would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

If I were coaching you, I would encourage you to be vulnerable and honest and answer it yourself, for your listeners. I’d encourage you to make that call on your show and air it, even if it makes you emotional — especially if it makes you emotional.

How can we ignore the one topic upon which every one of our listeners is focused?

Maybe, approaching it from a different angle, obliquely, is a way that works for you and for those who hear you.

~

There is a way to be with anger and fear and grief
A way to hold them with so much tenderness
That terror cannot take root.
Let us make a light of that tenderness
Leaning into each other, feeding each other
Creating together a heart that can hold it all.
           
~ Oriah House