Pet A Cat When You Encounter One

My daughter was very ill
She had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis
And when she was between the ages of 14 and 16
It first destroyed her hip which had to be replaced
And then it destroyed the ankle on her other leg which had to be replaced
She walked around two years on broken legs
And she was taking massive doses of opiates
She could hardly stay awake
And she had this advanced autoimmune disease
Which produced all sorts of other symptoms that were just as bad as the joint degeneration
But which are harder to describe
And so, it's just bloody brutal
You know it is a test of your faith
When there's almost nothing that's more direct than a serious illness inflicted upon an innocent child
But what to do in a situation like that
Because everyone is going to have a situation like that in some sense
You know you'll be faced with illnesses and the people that you love
And one of the things you do when you're overwhelmed by crisis
Is you shorten your time
You can't think about next month
Maybe you can't even bloody well think about next week or maybe not even tomorrow
Because now is just so overwhelming that that's all there is
And that's what you do you cut your timeframe back until you can cope with it
And if it's not the next week that you see how to get through that it's the next day
And if it's not the next day then it's the next hour
And if it's not the next hour then it's the next minute
And you know people are very-very-very tough
And it turns out
That if you face things you can put up with a lot more than you think you can put up with
And you can do it without becoming corrupt
And she did recover because she figured out what was wrong with her
And then took the necessary steps to fix it which is nothing short of a miracle
You have to be alert when you're suffering
You have to be alert to the beauty in life the unexpected beauty in life
There was this cat that lives across the street from us called Ginger
Cats really aren't domesticated
Technically speaking they're still wild animals
But they kind of like people
God only knows why but they do you know
And so Ginger will come wandering over and let you pet her
You know you have to look for those a little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness when things are bad
You have to look and see where things are still beautiful
You narrow your timeframe
You'd be grateful for what you have and that can get you through some very dark times
And maybe even successfully if you’re lucky
But even if I’m successfully and maybe it's only tragic and not absolute havoc you can do that
You know in the worst situation you can make it only tragic and not hell
There's nothing worse at a death bed than to see the people there fighting
The death is bad enough but you can take that as terrible as it is
And make it into something that's absolutely unbearable
Maybe I think
This is sort of what I closed the book with
If we didn't all attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are
Then maybe we could tolerate terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist
Maybe we can make the world into a better place
Knowing it's what we should be doing and what we could be doing
Because we don't have anything better to do
And that's what the book is about
And that's the end of 12 Rules for Life, thank you
[Applause]