Trevor Noah, seeking to understand & gratitude ... or not

Reflections from listening to one of most thoughtful people in public discourse today, & more listens/reads

April 23, 2023

So I am still on very limited screen time post-concussion, this was mostly written on a notebook spaced out among many rest breaks and then transcribed. Will link to best listens and a few articles at bottom, but mostly wanted to reflect on the Trevor Noah episode on Jay Shetty’s podcast. First, I have long thought Noah to be one of the most insightful people on U.S. culture. Funny, I got into watching him on The Daily Show through an ex-boyfriend who was a huge fan and we got tickets to watch the show live, though I ended up going alone. Nevertheless, I became familiar with Trevor Noah from the relationship and that is a big plus!

There were so many great takes and insights, but the one that most left me thinking was on whether we should be grateful for pain and suffering because we got some learnings or life experiences out of it. I tend to say/think well, it was f’ing awful - absolutely miserable, then joke 0/10 would not recommend - to have a concussion that led to a 24/7 migraine for nearly 2 years and caused a stroke, left me tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt at 11% interest (on top of my student loans) and forced me to change careers so I could pay off the debt … but then again, I gained resiliency and developed an even greater zest and appreciation for life (which I already had pretty well developed!) and new perspectives. So I should just be grateful for it overall, right?

[Now, I want to emphasize that the level of pain I had nonstop during this was at such an extreme that I:

*frequently went multiple nights with zero sleep despite opioid painkillers & prescription sleep meds because the pain was so extreme

*I have a vivid recollection of wishing somebody would break in and knock me out with a cast iron skillet because if I were unconscious, I would feel no pain for a few hours

*the pain left me sometimes so delirious that I wondered if I might walk into traffic in the street without realizing it, and my memory was affected such that I wouldn’t remember how to get home from work.]

Well - Trevor Noah provided some fresh perspective, that he can be accept that the coping mechanisms or tools he developed to deal with pain or trauma remain useful, while not glorifying that the bad things happened. “I’m never grateful for pain or suffering, I’m never grateful for those things. What I’m grateful for is the resiliency in our family and our ability to adapt. But I’m not going to be grateful for a horrible thing that happened to me or the people in my life because we learned how to deal with it … I understand why people say it sometimes, but I’m almost allergic to it, because I think what it does is it justifies what people are going through or it justifies the idea that we don’t need to do more or people aren’t going through something bad, because it creates the best, it can create diamonds. But I’m like, yeah, it can also pulverize people into dust. Diamonds are the exception.”

So perhaps a better perspective would be to acknowledge I have found a way to turn past-their-prime tomatoes into gazpacho, but I don’t have to say those tomatoes were tasty to begin with. I could have learned those same lessons of resiliency and perseverance and empathy and gratitude in a much less life-wrenching way.

Moving on in the podcast, some other key takeaways:

  • Friendship - Noah talks about being friendly with many, “but it takes me awhile for me to accept that this person is actually a part of my life.” When he calls someone a friend, it’s a deep thing … Friends are the core of my life. My friends tell me, “The Trevor I know would …” They bring me back to my purpose. Friendship is a choice. Every other relationship we have isn’t.

  • The human brain and the human body aren’t necessarily always on the same page. If you’re running from danger, if there’s a threat, and you run from the danger, even when the danger subsides, your body’s still in the danger. That was part of my experience.

  • Shetty and Noah talk about trying to express love in the way someone wants it, and Shetty says sometimes people aren’t ready for love, but only needing safety. An interesting take from Noah was: How do you find the correct safety to convey? We all have a different idea of safety, one of my wildest discoveries in therapy was I thrive in chaos. I’m very comfortable in chaos. I felt safest where most people wouldn’t and I felt least safe where most people would.

  • Anyone who regularly watched/listened to The Daily Show while Noah was the host knows he is an incisive and compassionate interviewer, but this gave some perspectives on why … Because I’ve always been outside (the majority), because I’ve never been part of, I’ve always been forced to understand. … He questions to try to understand the other’s perspective, to see how they see the world.

  • Asked by Shetty what his current purpose is, Noah said “Being a fertilizer for everything and everyone I come into contact with.” He expanded on this, and another thing that really shone through is his empathy for others. I don’t take for granted that I’m lucky. I work hard, I try to shape as much of the environment that my luck will exist within, but I never take for granted that I’m lucky.

A phenomenal interview, and while I miss Noah on The Daily Show, I am delighted for him that he is pursuing his dreams, his purpose, his happiness.

Other listens and reads … so many podcasts while I am on medical leave and screen-limited. Also, while I enjoy Tim Ferriss, I rarely listen because I tend to skip pods over an hour in length. Not right now.

  • Enthusiasm is super-contagious and people love to be around it.

  • More Tim Ferriss with Esther Perel and my former neighbor Hugh Jackman (saying that as if we were friends, ha! - no, but he was as friendly to all as you might expect)

  • Audiobook finished on Sant Jordi/Dia del Libro. Not chosen for this day, but had reserved it from NYPL and happened to come through last week. American in Barcelona - by Xavier Moret - on an American engineer named Frederick Pearson who helped to electrify Barcelona, but didn’t live to see it through as he died on the Lusitania in 1915.

Enjoy the listens, and a few reads. Feedback welcome!