Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper's beautiful conversation about grief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB46h1koicQ

In particular, watch this segment:

11:40-17:36

13:10: COOPER: "You told an interviewer you have learned to love the thing you most wish had not happened." (he seems to choke up, but regains his composure and continues) "You went on to say 'what punishments of God are not gifts? Do you really believe that?"

(long silence)

COLBERT: (looking down with a faraway look, and then back, smiling at Cooper) "Yes." (long pause) "It's a gift to exist...and with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that.And I guess I'm either a Catholic or a Buddhist when I say those things, 'cause I've heard them from both traditions. But...I didn't learn it, that I was grateful for the thing I most wish had not happened, is that I realized it....I don't want it to have happened, I want it to NOT have happened; BUT (long sigh) if you are grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do, um--not everybody is, and I'm not always--um but it's the most positive thing to do, then you have to be grateful for ALL of it. You can't pick and choose what you're grateful for.

And then, so what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people's loss

COOPER: Well that's true

COLBERT: which allows you to connect with that other person. Which allows you to love more deeply, and understand what it's like to be a human being, IF it's true that all humans suffer....

...it's about the fullness of your humanity. What's the point of being here and being human if you can't be the MOST human you can be? I'm not saying BEST; 'cause you can be a bad person and a most human; I want to be the MOST human I can be, and that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things I wish didn't happen, because they gave me a gift.

COOPER: ...sadness, suffering, these are alyou know, you can't have happiness without having loss and suffering.

COLBERT: And and in my tradition, that's the great gift of the sacrifice of Christ, is that God does it too. That you're really not alone. God does it too.

COLBERT "I wanna talk about what punishments of God are not gifts..."

sadly, the video never allows us to hear Stephen finish his thoughts, and after a clip of him on his show, cuts to a later portion of their conversation.