The One Choice That Decides Your Life

It's not your life that's a problem. It's the meaning you've attached to it. I had so many people over the decades. When I was doing Date with Desi when I started out, a lot of people got out of the Vietnam War, and a lot of veterans were pretty messed up. And interestingly enough, they would come there and I would read people's forms. So I'm reading these forms, and I read this man, and he's describing Vietnam. Vietnam. And he described having his best friend running about five feet ahead of him into the bush, and he had a landmine. His body blew into a million pieces, and his brains and body literally were dripping all over his body. And he said it was the most horrific event of his life. And what it meant to him was, man's inhumanity to man is unfathomable, and you can never trust anyone anytime you could be hurt. And I started reading another one. It's virtually the exact same story. In fact, I thought. I think I've read this one already until the last part. Guy's in Vietnam. This guy was in a foxhole with his best friend, and his buddy takes a bullet through the brain. His brain matter goes all over his body. Unbelievably traumatic experience. But here's the difference. The meaning, he said, what it meant to him is that life is fragile, and whoever you love, you should love them fully every day because you never know when it's your last. Are these people gonna have the same life or a radically different life? Which one? It has nothing to do with the event. It's the meaning. One was the victim. The other one was, I will find the way. Love is the basis of my life. And because that he interpreted the same experience differently.