The Chris Cuomo Project - Walk and Talk: You Are Not Alone

Episode Date: April 23, 2023

In a candid and honest Walk and Talk, Chris Cuomo shares how the struggles of want versus need are universal throughout the ages. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another walk and talk. If you're watching and I seem slimmer, it's because I am. Let's see if I can keep it up. Here's the good news, okay? The good news is that you are not alone. Not with any of it. No matter how personal or unique you find your challenges your questions your struggles your travails you are not alone and this is not a theism pitch as I say all the time you believe what works for you what helps you be a better version of who you want to be and how you want to treat people. Keeps you from hurting other people. If it's good with that, it's good with me, that's for sure. Tell me about it because that would be great. So you are not alone, meaning that the human condition

has always been pretty much the way it is now for all the advancements, for all the evolution, all the technology, as far as society has come. The struggles are so familiar over the ages. I was reading about these, like, I was reading about these like abstruse dialogues and treatises and debates between different types of schools of philosophy. And a lot of it is like not worth your time. But in some of the hagiographies, the writings about the lives of saints and people who are seen as huge figures, even back 300, 400, 500, in what we used to call A.D., we now call the

C.E., the common era, they were talking about the same things that we are today. things that we are today. Pride, wrath, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth. Those are the seven deadly sins right before the Catholic Church added to them. And they were struggling with them back then. Lust, the need for sex, what is wealth. And just like today, all the conveniences, all the opulence that is available if you're not restricted from it by ambition or socioeconomics or disability or whatever. The question was still the same. Want versus need. How do you live a life that is best in keeping with the values or virtues or divinity that inspire you same things what is love and how to love to be loved the need for community how to be a good person, what that looks like. I mean, from the Stoics to the Cynics to Hellenistic or Ancient Greek philosophy

to everybody in between and all those different civilizations, there's such similarities. I mean, even going from the idea of what you control and what you don't, and understanding the need to stay focused on where you are, because it's all you have. I mean, that is the definition of Zen. So, the good news. It's not just you. it's not just now. Now, not the bad news, but the reality is those challenges have always been there because they're hard,

and they're part of the human condition to the extent that you allow them to be. And of course, that is the ultimate truth, right? And boy, do I struggle with truth, right? And boy do I struggle with it, simple but so hard. Everything that happens to you, and really that comes from you, only means what you decide it means. How could you let her say that to you? That's how they feel about it, not you. How could you forgive them? How could you let her say that to you? That's how they feel about it, not you. How could you forgive them?

How could you not? Anybody who studies forgiveness understands it's way more for you than it is for the other person. And I'm not saying that it can't be also good for somebody else, but it's absolutely good for you. And that takes you to a place where it doesn't matter whether they deserve it or they feel sorry or this or that that's just all putting conditions on your own happiness not really theirs and how do we know this because one of the best constructions constructs, ideas of Christianity is grace. I've talked about this before. I think about it all the time. Mind-boggling. Forgiveness you don't deserve. It's one of the best metaphors, concepts

for the belief in something bigger than us. Because how can a wretch like me deserve another chance and deserve forgiveness? That's my prayer every night is, oh, thank you for the grace of another day. Please help me to use it better tomorrow. If I get the gift again, help me to be better better tomorrow if I get the gift again help me to be better to the people and love

help me to be a help help to keep me from my choices and my doubts and my fears and my flaws next night same thing

why? because that's how much love there is. Because that's how beneficent it is. And you don't deserve it. It doesn't matter if you do or not. It happens anyway. It doesn't matter what you say back or what you do back. It's coming anyway. Now, what a great justification for something bigger as an intelligence, as an energy, as an inspiration, as a motivation. And of course, people will quibble and say,

well, not everybody should get that chance. You should have to be doing the right things. And the beautiful part of that criticism is who are you to say? Who are you to say what somebody should or should not be or do? That's the problem with religion. Okay? Separate religion from faith. So, the reality is these challenges have always existed because they are hard and they are real.

These challenges have always existed because they are hard and they are real. Now, within that, we get the uncomfortable truth, which is, it's not that you don't know. It's that you struggle to show consistently. And by you, I mean me. Because I say this all the time to myself and probably to you, fly for a written test, I would ace it. But the practical exam is kicking my ass. And look, that's okay. Because that's what I'm saying it is in this very moment. It's okay.

Do I say it all the time? No. Huge self-loather. Is that totally contrary to what I just said? Yes. Well, then why do I do it? Bad habit. Insecurity.

Knowledge of self. Guilt. Shame. Anger. Upset. But I believe there is solace. There certainly is for me in the idea that I am not special in terms of what works and doesn't work and the struggles. I mean, I think that what really separates people are those who decide to try and those who don't. people are those who decide to try and those who don't. Two steps sideways. One, listen,

I don't breathe through my nose because I have so much scar tissue in my face, even though I had a surgery for it, broken my nose a bunch of times. I walk at about 3.8 to 4.2 miles an hour. You try it and talk at the same time and then tell me I'm out of shape. And by the way, even though your analysis is fugazi, your conclusion is still right. I'm not in great shape. I've got to get better. Second, it is amazing to me how many of you, one, are digging these. Two, are asking me to set up a subscription outlet that is just this stuff. I don't know about that. I mean, I could obviously commit any money to something that we all want to believe in. But more than that, I mean, it's already free.

All of a sudden, they start making people pay for it. I don't know. I have to figure out. I have to understand the value proposition. But while I'm very appreciative of that, I can't believe how many of you don't know that I'm back on television and doing a cable news show for News Nation. And, you know, it is a startup, but it's just

odd, you know, people say, where is it? Oh, I gotta be honest, I do remember some people saying that to me when I left ABC News and went to CNN. Nothing like it is with NewsNation. But, you know, where is that? I'm not a big cable TV watcher. Gotta remember, I'm old. 15 years ago, whenever it was, you know, cable news wasn't the whole game the way it is now in terms of the kind of conflation with social media

in terms of what's trending and what matters. Okay, so, two steps back to the center. If it's always been happening, what do we see in that? There is a dynamic, and I really do have to find its origin. I've looked on and off, but I've never really perused the research and trying to find an answer. See if this fits with your life experience. Good times make weak people. Weak people make hard times. Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Again, you can start it anywhere. You know, the cycle doesn't really matter because you're always in

one part of it, right? Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make weak people. Now, none of that has to be so, but it is all so familiar, isn't it? It doesn't have to be because hard times could break you. it happen. I think to a certain extent it happened to me. And again, I am unconcerned by anybody else's reckoning of how bad or not bad anything that you know about me seems. Why? It doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. If there's something to be learned from the criticism, great. If there's some comfort in the commiseration, I guess that can be helpful to some. But at the end of the day, you've got to own your own head and heart. To thine own self be true. Know thyself. Right? I lived in Anakalo's main temple back in the Greek days. Or so you read in the mythology.

So, for me, it doesn't matter. And, look, I've been in competitions where I sailed through the hardest part, and then something else tripped me up. Kept me from performing the way I wanted to kept me from winning kept me from finishing whatever it is so all pain is personal and it doesn't matter if I'm impressed with your struggle or your challenge or your journey or your success doesn't matter. It's just whatever it is and whatever it affects and how you deal with that. Because that you certainly control.

You have very little control over what happens to you in this world, in this life. But you have 100% control over what it means to you and how you deal with it. So, no question, I've had times that have proven hard, and really, I'm still in them in ways. And look, I get that some of you are frustrated and you want to know more about what's going on. Listen, I got to respect the rules of the litigation, you know. And a lot of this stuff that has to do with my brother, it's really nobody else's business now. So, to the extent that I can make any sense of why it's anybody's business. But, I got to deal with it.

And I got to deal with life on life's terms, but I get to decide on how I react to those terms. And I'm not going to be yip yapping about what's going on and why to you, because it's not really helpful to you. What is helpful to you, I hope, is that what I have struggled with, who absolutely scrambled my eggs and made me have to rethink and recommit and still has me kind of spinning around. Because, you know, I'm on mood medication. I take an antidepressant, and it doesn't matter how popular it is and how familiar that may be.

I feel different and I feel differently than I did before. You know, I'm under doctor's care and I believe very much in therapy. I am back in my frequency with therapy. I've moved away from it because I was just so sick of my shit. And I didn't want to think about it and I wanted to get away from it. But you know, that doesn't work for me. You know, it's the same thing with booze. It's the same thing with drugs.

Same thing with sex. You know, you do things to distract yourself from what you don't want to deal with or what you can't deal with. But it's still there. And now it's usually worse. Or there's more of it, the same or different. So this has proven better, but it's just not easy. And again, you know, we're so afraid to say that to people, that something's hard for us. You know, if you're in the parent game, you see this with kids all the time where they don't want to tell you that something is difficult or now sometimes depending on, you know, how much of a support system you are. Sometimes they tell you things are hard when

they just don't want to try, but still takes you to the same place is that there's an insecurity. And I'm telling you, that insecurity goes back as far as recorded time, where, you know, these stories, even the hagiographies, you know, these saints' lives, of these amazing things, you know, Simeon on the column. You know, I had to learn about him a long time ago because David Blaine, the magician,

decided to redo Simeon's column, you know, the columnist, I think they called it columnist or something like that, because he supposedly stood on this column up high in the air for like ridiculous amounts of time and degrees of deprivation. But in the last year or so, which has been one of the deepest aspects of my education. You know, for high school, college, law school, and even my reading through the years in this business, which is really the kind of journalism I've usually been a part of, is really kind of a research, you know, writing, eyewitness, you know, like you learn about a lot of things,

especially when I was in the magazine business in 2020 in a primetime at ABC with these amazing teams of producers. You learn about so many different things. But I have never gone as deep and as wide. Well, that's not true. I've gone as wide. I've gone much wider. But I've never gone as deep as I have in the last year. Of figuring out.

What works for me. And why it works for me. I would have never done this shit a year ago. None of this. No way. Podcast. Talking to people about my life. That could be so easily weaponized.

And misconstrued and misunderstood. Walking six miles back from this service station where I just dropped off this jalopy. But now, you know, it's not that I'm different necessarily, although I think there are aspects of that behaviorally. But facts and circumstances change. You know, it's such an interesting paradox. And it's a lesson from the pandemic that we really haven't learned. Science changes on the basis of fact, right? Science is from the Greek word knowledge.

And you know things on the basis of what you know at the time. And that is so unsatisfying for us. And it's so easily weaponized in politics. Because in politics, it's the reverse. You never change a position. Because it's seen as weakness. Which is really stupid, if you think about it. Because people should have a chance to change you know people show like Biden's been in politics for like 50 years or whatever

and they show clips of him and by the way the president with all due respect has never been a guy who was held out for being some intellectual cornerstone of our political reckoning you know but he used to feel differently about gay marriage and different things that are cultural. But that makes sense.

You know, that's what I don't understand completely about this desire to go back and cancel historical figures. I get not celebrating the Confederacy. I totally get it. And I get stomping on the idea that the Civil War was about heritage or, you know, something virtuous. It's about slavery and the desire to control their own lives with that as a central part of their commerce and their cultural understanding. So, I get it. But where does it stop?

I mean, you really think we're going to keep calling this country America if we do a deep dive on Amerigo Vespucci? Bad enough he's Italian. But, you know, I just think that sometimes you have to, unless you fundamentally misunderstood somebody, and it turned out that while they did do whatever this big feat is, they were like really horrible. Why can't two things be true at once? That Columbus discovered the West Indies or wherever,

and he also was an example of this and that and this and that. Horrible behaviors, malefactor, the worst of infringement on natives. Why can't two things be true at once? Of course, it can be, but we do it out of convenience. I think you've got to think about it. And it falls into that cycle. Good times make weak people. In America, relatively, no matter how many different arrows we can sling at problems that we have here and income disparity and poverty and hunger, which are real. Relatively, we've been going through some pretty healthy days by international comparison.

And I'm not saying that there aren't things that are signs of distress and stress that have to be improved that are getting worse. I'm not saying that. I'm saying we make our own fights. It's not like we're fixing those things. We're not fixing our STEM gap with other countries, right? We're just blaming people for it and pretending that banning books is somehow how we improve our education. Come on, that's bullshit. That's bullshit as much as defund the police or any of these other things. So what am I trying to say

here? Simply, 21 minutes in, these challenges have always been there in most societies. Now, we're a unique society. It's hard to find another society that was not ruled by a despot, you know, or some kind of centralized potentate. We've always been in the struggle of the collective here. We're all so young, but hopefully it stays that way. It's always been that way, this cycle of humanity, of suffering, of struggle. It's always been there. And that means we can deal with it,

because people have survived, and they've continued, and they've overcome, and you can do it. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy and it doesn't mean it's going to be consistent. It almost guarantees it's going to be inconsistent. Very few people who have any kind of balanced existence do the right things in the right ways all the time. Well, if you're watching, look how beautiful that sky is. the right things in the right ways all the time. Wow. If you're watching, look how beautiful that sky is. If you're listening,

I have a beautiful sky over my head right now. And I hope as I do, you take some solace in that. That this struggle has always been there. Now, someone said to me the other day, hey, you're right, man. This too shall pass. Okay. Yeah, time is a huge, huge player

in our journey, right? Fundamentally. But check yourself before you wreck yourself. Time, this too shall pass. But how does it pass? How? You know what I'm saying? Sometimes the right move is to do nothing.

Sometimes the right move is to fight like hell. Sometimes the right move is both. Sometimes, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, sometimes know sometimes you gotta work on yourself sometimes for it to pass meaning what yeah time's gonna go by but nothing changes if nothing changes so sometimes problems endure sometimes good times endure even when you're screwing up it's like you know people say oh it's luck or it's divine intervention, or whatever it is. Well, there's just as good a chance as much about probability and circumstances

as it is about anything else. But you can see it any way you want. It should take you to the same place, which is to do as much as you can to mitigate problems, reduce their duration and impact. Take the loss when you must. Recognize the failure when you must. And learn and adjust and go. And when there is success, when there is a break,

when there is a windfall, when there is a break, when there is a windfall, when there is grace. Oh, be thankful. Be grateful. You are not alone. The human condition has always been struggle. It will continue to be so. So keep walking.

Keep thinking. Keep doing what you can to be who you want to be not because I'm telling you not because I represent any kind of desired outcome it's not who I am it's not what I want to be about. I know very little. And I struggle as much as I can. So, the answer is by your own standard. By what you desire. By what matters to you. By what is how you define yourself and your place in this world and your purpose and your passion and how you pursue it

because of how it gives you satisfaction and what it means for yourself and the people who matter most to you in the situations that matter most to you, to thine own self. You're not alone. This is not just you, but at the end of the day, it is all up to you. That is good and bad, a blessing and a curse. And all we can do is do. So let's get after it.