A lesson in intimacy
I find myself at one of those moments each of us face in our lives. My father, 91, has terminal pancreatic cancer. My mother, 87, is slipping away into dementia. She is literally losing who she is in front of my eyes.
Death is not a stranger to me, though I’ve faced nothing this personal. It’s impossible to live to my age and not have lost people I loved.
Loss is the condition of life.
Years ago, as I was sharing the final days of a close friend, I read a book called, How We Die, by Sherwin Nuland, a medical doctor at Yale. It’s actually a wonderful book, not at all depressing, and I highly recommend it. Dr. Nuland died in March, but before his death, he recorded an interview you should hear — if not all of it, at least the first few minutes.
“The more personal you are willing to be, and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are.”
I have spent my entire career trying to share this message.
In stations across Europe and Asia, in control rooms across America, with incredibly talented people and those just trying to figure out who they can be on the air, this is the essence of all emotional bonding, distilled into one sentence.
“The more personal you are willing to be, and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are.”
You won’t know it’s true until you do it, and it has to be authentic and honest and real, but IF you do it, the effect will amaze you, and change your life.