"Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty. It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality -- a pitiable flight from life. As such, it deserves no compassion, it deserves no treatment as minority martyrdom, and it deserves not to be deemed anything but a pernicious sickness."
"Čak i u potpuno nereligioznom kontekstu, homoseksualnost predstavlja zlouporabu seksualnih mogućnosti. Ona je jadna, drugorazredna zamjena za stvarnost -- jadan bijeg od života. Kao takva ne zaslužuje suosjećanje, ne zaslužuje da se prema njoj odnosi kao prema teškoj patnji manjine i ne zaslužuje da se smatra ičim drugim doli opasnom bolešću."
That's from "Time" magazine in 1966, when I was three years old. And last year, the president of the United States came out in favor of gay marriage.
Ovo je citat iz časopisa Time iz 1966. kada sam imao tri godine. Prošle je godine predsjednik SAD-a podržao gay brakove.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
And my question is: How did we get from there to here? How did an illness become an identity?
Moje pitanje je kako smo stigli odatle do ovdje? Kako je bolest postala identitet?
When I was perhaps six years old, I went to a shoe store with my mother and my brother. And at the end of buying our shoes, the salesman said to us that we could each have a balloon to take home. My brother wanted a red balloon, and I wanted a pink balloon. My mother said that she thought I'd really rather have a blue balloon.
Kada sam imao otprilike šest godina, otišao sam s majkom i bratom u trgovinu cipela. Kada smo kupili cipele, prodavač nam je rekao da možemo dobiti po jedan balon svaki. Moj brat je htio crveni balon, a ja sam htio ružičasti. Moja majka je rekla da misli kako bih ja radije htio plavi balon.
(Laughter)
No ja sam rekao da bih bez dvojbe htio ružičasti.
But I said that I definitely wanted the pink one. And she reminded me that my favorite color was blue. The fact that my favorite color now is blue, but I'm still gay --
Na što me ona podsjetila da mi je omiljena boja plava. Činjenica da mi je danas omiljena boja plava, no da sam i dalje gay --
(Laughter)
(Smijeh) --
is evidence of both my mother's influence and its limits.
je istovremeno dokaz majčinog utjecaja i njegovih ograničenja.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
When I was little, my mother used to say, "The love you have for your children is like no other feeling in the world. And until you have children, you don't know what it's like." And when I was little, I took it as the greatest compliment in the world that she would say that about parenting my brother and me. And when I was an adolescent, I thought, "But I'm gay, and so I probably can't have a family." And when she said it, it made me anxious. And after I came out of the closet, when she continued to say it, it made me furious. I said, "I'm gay. That's not the direction that I'm headed in. And I want you to stop saying that."
Kada sam bio mali, moja majka je često govorila: "Ljubav prema vlastitoj djeci se ne može mjeriti s nijednim drugim osjećajem. I dok ne budeš imao svoju djecu, nećeš znati kako je to." Kada sam bio mali, mislio sam kako je najveći kompliment na svijetu što može reći tako nešto o odgoju mog brata i mene. Kada sam bio adolescent, mislio sam kako vjerojatno neću moći imati obitelj jer sam gay. Kada je ona to rekla to me uznemirilo. Kada sam priznao da sam gay, a ona je to nastavila govoriti, to me činilo bijesnim. Rekao sam: "Ja sam gay. Moj život ne ide u tom pravcu. Želim da to prestaneš govoriti."
About 20 years ago, I was asked by my editors at the "New York Times Magazine" to write a piece about Deaf culture. And I was rather taken aback. I had thought of deafness entirely as an illness: those poor people, they couldn't hear, they lacked hearing, and what could we do for them? And then I went out into the Deaf world. I went to Deaf clubs. I saw performances of Deaf theater and of Deaf poetry. I even went to the Miss Deaf America contest in Nashville, Tennessee, where people complained about that slurry Southern signing.
Prije otprilike 20 godina, moji urednici u The New York Timesu su me zamolili da napišem članak o kulturi gluhih osoba. Bio sam prilično zatečen. O gluhoći sam razmišljao isključivo kao o bolesti. Ti jadni ljudi ne mogu čuti. Nemaju osjet sluha i što mi možemo učiniti za njih? Tada sam otišao u svijet gluhih osoba. Išao sam u klubove za gluhe. Gledao sam nastupe kazališta za gluhe i poezije za gluhe. Čak sam išao na izbor Gluhe Miss Amerike u Nashvilleu, u državi Tennessee gdje su se ljudi žalili na nerazumljivi južnjački znakovni jezik.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And as I plunged deeper and deeper into the Deaf world, I became convinced that Deafness was a culture and that the people in the Deaf world who said, "We don't lack hearing; we have membership in a culture," were saying something that was viable. It wasn't my culture, and I didn't particularly want to rush off and join it, but I appreciated that it was a culture and that for the people who were members of it, it felt as valuable as Latino culture or gay culture or Jewish culture. It felt as valid, perhaps, even as American culture.
Kada sam dublje uronio u svijet gluhih, uvjerio sam se da je gluhoća kultura i da ljudi u svijetu gluhih koji su govorili: "Nama ne nedostaje osjet sluha, mi smo članovi jedne kulture." govore o nečem smislenom. To nije bila moja kultura i nisam joj se posebno želio priključiti, ali sam shvatio da to jest kultura i da za osobe koje joj pripadaju ima jednaku vrijednost kao latinoamerička, gay ili židovska kultura. Možda su je doživljavali jednako valjanom poput američke kulture.
Then a friend of a friend of mine had a daughter who was a dwarf. And when her daughter was born, she suddenly found herself confronting questions that now began to seem quite resonant to me. She was facing the question of what to do with this child. Should she say, "You're just like everyone else but a little bit shorter?" Or should she try to construct some kind of dwarf identity, get involved in the Little People of America, become aware of what was happening for dwarfs?
Zatim je prijateljica mog prijatelja dobila kćer koja je patuljak. Kada joj se rodila kćer, odjednom se suočila s pitanjima koja su mi se činila prilično jasnima. Suočila se s pitanjem što činiti s tim djetetom. Bi li mu trebala reći: "Ti si isti kao svi drugi samo malo niži?" Ili je trebala izgraditi neku vrst identiteta patuljka, uključiti se u udrugu Osoba malog rasta, osvijestiti što se događa s patuljcima?
And I suddenly thought, "Most deaf children are born to hearing parents. Those hearing parents tend to try to cure them. Those deaf people discover community somehow in adolescence. Most gay people are born to straight parents. Those straight parents often want them to function in what they think of as the mainstream world, and those gay people have to discover identity later on. And here was this friend of mine, looking at these questions of identity with her dwarf daughter. And I thought, "There it is again: a family that perceives itself to be normal with a child who seems to be extraordinary." And I hatched the idea that there are really two kinds of identity.
Tada sam pomislio kako većina gluhe djece imaju roditelje koji čuju. Ti roditelji ih pokušavaju izliječiti. Te gluhe osobe u adolescenciji otkrivaju svoju zajednicu. Većina gay osoba imaju roditelje koji su heteroseksualni. Ti heteroseksualni roditelji uglavnom žele da njihova djeca funkcioniraju u svijetu kojeg oni vide kao uobičajen te ta gay djeca moraju kasnije otkriti vlastiti identitet. I tu je primjer moje prijateljice koja se suočavala s pitanjima identiteta svoje kćeri patuljastog rasta. Pomislio sam kako se opet radi o istom: obitelj koja sebe doživljava normalnom s neobičnim djetetom. Javila mi se ideja da postoje dvije vrste identiteta.
There are vertical identities, which are passed down generationally from parent to child. Those are things like ethnicity, frequently nationality, language, often religion. Those are things you have in common with your parents and with your children. And while some of them can be difficult, there's no attempt to cure them. You can argue that it's harder in the United States -- our current presidency notwithstanding -- to be a person of color. And yet, we have nobody who is trying to ensure that the next generation of children born to African-Americans and Asians come out with creamy skin and yellow hair.
Postoji vertikalni identitet koji se prenosi generacijski s roditelja na dijete. To su stvari poput etničke pripadnosti, nacionalnosti, jezika i često vjere. To su stvari koje su zajedničke vama, vašim roditeljima i vašoj djeci. I iako neke od njih mogu biti teške, ne pokušava ih se izliječiti. Možete tvrditi da je u SAD-u, bez obzira na trenutnog predsjednika, teže biti osoba koja nije bijele kože. A ipak nitko ne pokušava osigurati da se iduća generacija djece čiji su roditelji afroamerikaci ili azijati rodi svijetloputa i plavokosa.
There are these other identities which you have to learn from a peer group, and I call them "horizontal identities," because the peer group is the horizontal experience. These are identities that are alien to your parents and that you have to discover when you get to see them in peers. And those identities, those horizontal identities, people have almost always tried to cure.
Postoji i druga vrst identiteta koja se uči od vršnjaka koju nazivam horizontalnim identitetom jer je grupa vršnjaka horizontalno iskustvo. To su identiteti strani vašim roditeljima i koje morate otkriti od vršnjaka. Te horizontalne identitete, su ljudi gotovo uvijek pokušavali liječiti.
And I wanted to look at what the process is through which people who have those identities come to a good relationship with them. And it seemed to me that there were three levels of acceptance that needed to take place. There's self-acceptance, there's family acceptance, and there's social acceptance. And they don't always coincide.
Htio sam saznati kojim procesom se osobe koje imaju te identitete mire s njima. I činilo mi se da postoje tri razine prihvaćanja koje se moraju dogoditi. Prihvaćanje samih sebe, roditeljsko i društveno prihvaćanje. I ona se uvijek ne podudaraju.
And a lot of the time, people who have these conditions are very angry, because they feel as though their parents don't love them, when what actually has happened is that their parents don't accept them. Love is something that, ideally, is there unconditionally throughout the relationship between a parent and a child. But acceptance is something that takes time. It always takes time.
Osobe koje imaju ova stanja su često ljute jer osjećaju da ih roditelji ne vole dok ih zapravo roditelji ne prihvaćaju. Idealno, ljubav postoji bezuvjetno između djeteta i roditelja. No za prihvaćanje treba vremena. Uvijek treba vremena.
One of the dwarfs I got to know was a guy named Clinton Brown. When he was born, he was diagnosed with diastrophic dwarfism, a very disabling condition, and his parents were told that he would never walk, he would never talk, he would have no intellectual capacity, and he would probably not even recognize them. And it was suggested to them that they leave him at the hospital so that he could die there quietly.
Jedna osoba patuljastog rasta koju sam upoznao se zvao Clinton Brown. Kad se rodio, dijagnosticiran mu je teški oblik patuljastosti, stanje teškog invaliditeta. Roditeljima je rečeno da neće nikada hodati, govoriti, imati ikakve intelektualne mogućnosti te da ih vjerojatno neće ni prepoznavati. Predloženo im je da ga ostave u bolnici kako bi mogao mirno umrijeti. Njegova majka je to odbila.
His mother said she wasn't going to do it, and she took her son home. And even though she didn't have a lot of educational or financial advantages, she found the best doctor in the country for dealing with diastrophic dwarfism, and she got Clinton enrolled with him. And in the course of his childhood, he had 30 major surgical procedures. And he spent all this time stuck in the hospital while he was having those procedures, as a result of which, he now can walk.
I odvela ga kući. I iako nije imala velikih obrazovnih i financijskih mogućnosti, pronašla je najboljeg doktora u zemlji za njegovo stanje i upisala je Clintona kod njega. Tokom djetinjstva Clinton je prošao 30 velikih operacija. I proveo je svo to vrijeme u bolnici dok je prolazio te zahvate. Rezultat je da danas može hodati.
While he was there, they sent tutors around to help him with his schoolwork, and he worked very hard, because there was nothing else to do. He ended up achieving at a level that had never before been contemplated by any member of his family. He was the first one in his family, in fact, to go to college, where he lived on campus and drove a specially fitted car that accommodated his unusual body.
Dok je bio tamo, slali su učitelje da mu pomognu sa školovanjem. Naporno je radio jer ionako nije imao što drugo činiti. Na koncu je dosegao stupanj obrazovanja o kojem nitko u njegovoj obitelji do tada nije ni razmišljao. Bio je prva osoba iz svoje obitelji koja je otišla na fakultet. Stanovao je na kampusu i vozio automobil prilagođen njegovom neobičnom tijelu.
And his mother told me the story of coming home one day -- and he went to college nearby -- and she said, "I saw that car, which you can always recognize, in the parking lot of a bar," she said.
Njegova majka mi je ispričala kako je jednom došla kući -- on je pohađao obližnji fakultet -- i ugledala njegov prepoznatljiv automobil na parkiralištu jednog kafića. (Smijeh)
(Laughter)
"Pomislila sam, oni su visoki 180, a on 90cm.
"And I thought to myself, 'They're six feet tall, he's three feet tall. Two beers for them is four beers for him.'" She said, "I knew I couldn't go in there and interrupt him, but I went home, and I left him eight messages on his cell phone." She said, "And then I thought, if someone had said to me, when he was born, that my future worry would be that he'd go drinking and driving with his college buddies ..."
Ono što je njima dva piva, njemu su četiri." "Znala sam da ne mogu ući i prekinuti ga, pa sam otišla kući i ostavila mu osam poruka na mobitel." "Tada sam pomislila da ne bih vjerovala da mi je netko rekao kada se rodio kako ću se u budućnosti brinuti što s prijateljima pije i onda vozi." (Pljesak)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
And I said to her, "What do you think you did that helped him to emerge as this charming, accomplished, wonderful person?" And she said, "What did I do? I loved him, that's all. Clinton just always had that light in him. And his father and I were lucky enough to be the first to see it there."
Pitao sam je: "Što misliš da si učinila da mu je pomoglo da postane takva šarmantna, uspješna i prekrasna osoba?" "Što sam učinila? Voljela sam ga, samo to. Clinton je uvijek imao tu iskru, a njegov otac i ja smo imali tu sreću da je prvi ugledamo."
I'm going to quote from another magazine of the '60s. This one is from 1968 -- "The Atlantic Monthly," voice of liberal America -- written by an important bioethicist. He said, "There is no reason to feel guilty about putting a Down's syndrome child away, whether it is 'put away' in the sense of hidden in a sanitarium or in a more responsible, lethal sense. It is sad, yes. Dreadful. But it carries no guilt. True guilt arises only from an offense against a person, and a Down's is not a person."
Navest ću citat iz još jednog časopisa iz 60tih. Ovaj je iz 1968., iz The Atlantic Monthly, glasa liberalne Amerike -- a napisao ga je važan bioetičar. Rekao je: "Ne treba osjećati krivnju zbog uklanjanja djeteta s Downovim sindromom, bilo da se radi o skrivanju u sanatorij ili odgovornijem, smrtonosnom načinu. Da, to je tužno i strašno. Ali nema krivnje. Istinska krivnja proizlazi iz napada na osobu, a Downovac nije osoba."
There's been a lot of ink given to the enormous progress that we've made in the treatment of gay people. The fact that our attitude has changed is in the headlines every day. But we forget how we used to see people who had other differences, how we used to see people who were disabled, how inhuman we held people to be. And the change that's been accomplished there, which is almost equally radical, is one that we pay not very much attention to.
Puno se pisalo o napretku koji smo postigli u odnosu spram gay osoba. To se svakodnevno vidi u novinskim naslovima. No zaboravljamo kako smo gledali osobe s drugim razlikama, kako smo gledali osobe s invaliditetom, kako smo ih doživljavali nečovječnima. Na tu promjenu koja je gotovo jednako radikalna, gotovo uopće ne obraćamo pozornost.
One of the families I interviewed, Tom and Karen Robards, were taken aback when, as young and successful New Yorkers, their first child was diagnosed with Down syndrome. They thought the educational opportunities for him were not what they should be, and so they decided they would build a little center -- two classrooms that they started with a few other parents -- to educate kids with DS. And over the years, that center grew into something called the Cooke Center, where there are now thousands upon thousands of children with intellectual disabilities who are being taught.
Jedna od obitelji koju sam intervjuirao, Tom i Karen Robards, su bili zatečeni kada im je, kao mladim i uspješnim njujorčanima, prvom djetetu dijagnosticiran Downov sindrom. Smatrali su da obrazovne mogućnosti za njega nisu kakve bi trebale biti. Stoga su odlučili izgraditi mali centar - dvije učionice koje su pokrenuli s još nekoliko roditelja -- za obrazovanje djece s Downovim sindromom. Kroz godine taj centar je izrastao u Centar Cooke u kojem se obrazuje na tisuće djece s intelektualnim poteškoćama. Od objave članka u Atlantic Monhtleyju
In the time since that "Atlantic Monthly" story ran, the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome has tripled. The experience of Down syndrome people includes those who are actors, those who are writers, some who are able to live fully independently in adulthood.
životni vijek osoba s Downom se utrostručio. Osobe s Downovim sindromom postaju glumci, pisci, a neki od njih su potpuno samostalni u odrasloj dobi.
The Robards had a lot to do with that. And I said, "Do you regret it? Do you wish your child didn't have Down syndrome? Do you wish you'd never heard of it?" And interestingly, his father said, "Well, for David, our son, I regret it, because for David, it's a difficult way to be in the world, and I'd like to give David an easier life. But I think if we lost everyone with Down syndrome, it would be a catastrophic loss."
Robardovi su prilično zaslužni za to. Pitao sam ih: "Žalite li zbog toga? Biste li željeli da vaše dijete nema Down? Biste li željeli da nikad niste čuli za Down?" Otac je imao zanimljiv odgovor: "Žalim zbog našeg sina Davida jer mu to otežava život i volio bih mu pružiti lakši život. No mislim da bi gubitak svih osoba s Downom bio katastrofalan gubitak. Karen Robards mi je rekla: "Slažem se s Tomom.
And Karen Robards said to me, "I'm with Tom. For David, I would cure it in an instant, to give him an easier life. But speaking for myself -- well, I would never have believed 23 years ago when he was born that I could come to such a point. Speaking for myself, it's made me so much better and so much kinder and so much more purposeful in my whole life that, speaking for myself, I wouldn't give it up for anything in the world."
Izliječila bih ga odmah da mu pružim lakši život. Govoreći u svoje ime, ne bih nikad povjerovala, kada se rodio prije 23 godine, da ću doći do te točke. Govoreći u svoje ime, postala sam bolja i ljubaznija osoba i moj život je toliko svrhovitiji da to, govoreći u svoje ime, ne bih mijenjala nizašto."
We live at a point when social acceptance for these and many other conditions is on the up and up. And yet we also live at the moment when our ability to eliminate those conditions has reached a height we never imagined before. Most deaf infants born in the United States now will receive cochlear implants, which are put into the brain and connected to a receiver, and which allow them to acquire a facsimile of hearing and to use oral speech. A compound that has been tested in mice, BMN-111, is useful in preventing the action of the achondroplasia gene. Achondroplasia is the most common form of dwarfism, and mice who have been given that substance and who have the achondroplasia gene grow to full size. Testing in humans is around the corner. There are blood tests which are making progress that would pick up Down syndrome more clearly and earlier in pregnancies than ever before, making it easier and easier for people to eliminate those pregnancies, or to terminate them.
Živimo u vremenu kada je društveno prihvaćanje ovog i mnogih drugih stanja u konstantnom porastu. No također živimo u vremenu kada su naše mogućnosti uklanjanja takvih stanja dosegle nezamislive razine. Većina američke novorođenčadi će dobiti umjetne pužnice koje se usađuju u mozak i povezuju s prijamnikom koji im omogućava da čuju i koriste govor. Kemijski spoj BMN-111 koji je testiran na miševima je koristan u prevenciji djelovanja gena za ahondroplaziju. Ahonroplazija ja najčešći oblik poremećaja patuljastog rasta. Miševi koji su primili taj spoj i koji imaju gen za ahondroplaziju narastu do pune veličine. Na korak smo do testiranja na ljudima. Razvijaju se testovi krvi koji će prepoznati Downov sindrom u trudnoći ranije i jasnije nego ikada do sada te će biti sve lakše eliminirati ili okončati takve trudnoće. Uočavamo i društveni i medicinski napredak
So we have both social progress and medical progress. And I believe in both of them. I believe the social progress is fantastic and meaningful and wonderful, and I think the same thing about the medical progress. But I think it's a tragedy when one of them doesn't see the other. And when I see the way they're intersecting in conditions like the three I've just described, I sometimes think it's like those moments in grand opera when the hero realizes he loves the heroine at the exact moment that she lies expiring on a divan.
i vjerujem u oba. Vjerujem da je društveni napredak izvanredan, značajan i predivan, a isto mislim i za medicinski napredak. No mislim da je tragedija kada se međusobno ne uočavaju. Kada vidim kako se presijecaju u uvjetima poput ovih koje sam opisao, ponekad pomislim da je to kao kad u operi junak shvati da voli junakinju točno kada ona leži izdišući na sofi. (Smijeh)
(Laughter)
We have to think about how we feel about cures altogether. And a lot of the time the question of parenthood is: What do we validate in our children, and what do we cure in them?
Moramo promisliti općenito o našim stavovima prema lijekovima. Često se u roditeljstvu postavlja pitanje što uvažavamo kod naše djece, a što želimo izliječiti?
Jim Sinclair, a prominent autism activist, said, "When parents say, 'I wish my child did not have autism,' what they're really saying is, 'I wish the child I have did not exist and I had a different, nonautistic child instead.' Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure: that your fondest wish for us is that someday we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces." It's a very extreme point of view, but it points to the reality that people engage with the life they have and they don't want to be cured or changed or eliminated. They want to be whoever it is that they've come to be.
Istaknuti aktivist za autizam, Jim Sinclair, je rekao: "Kada roditelji kažu 'volio bih da moje dijete nema autizam', zapravo govore 'volio bih da dijete koje imam ne postoji i da imam drugačije, ne-autistično dijete umjesto ovog.' Razmislite o tome. To čujemo kada oplakujete naše postojanje. To čujemo kada se molite za lijek -- da je vaša najveća želja za nas da jedan dan prestanemo postojati i da se stranci koje ćete voljeti usele iza naših lica." Ovo je vrlo ekstremno gledište, no ukazuje na stvarnost u kojoj se ljudi nose sa životom koji imaju i ne žele biti izliječeni, promijenjeni ili eliminirani. Žele biti osobe kojima su postale.
One of the families I interviewed for this project was the family of Dylan Klebold, who was one of the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre. It took a long time to persuade them to talk to me, and once they agreed, they were so full of their story that they couldn't stop telling it, and the first weekend I spent with them, the first of many, I recorded more than 20 hours of conversation.
Jedna od obitelji koju sam intervjuirao za ovaj projekt je bila obitelj Dylana Klebolda, jednog od počinitelja masakra u Columbineu. Trebalo mi je dosta vremena da ih nagovorim da razgovaraju sa mnom. Kada su konačno pristali imali su toliko za reći da se nisu mogli zaustaviti. U prvom od mnogih vikenda koje sam proveo s njima, snimio sam više od 20 sati razgovora. U nedjelju navečer smo svi bili iscrpljeni.
And on Sunday night, we were all exhausted. We were sitting in the kitchen. Sue Klebold was fixing dinner. And I said, "If Dylan were here now, do you have a sense of what you'd want to ask him?" And his father said, "I sure do. I'd want to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing." And Sue looked at the floor, and she thought for a minute. And then she looked back up and said, "I would ask him to forgive me for being his mother and never knowing what was going on inside his head."
Sjedili smo u kuhinji. Sue Klebold je pripremala večeru. Rekao sam: "Da je Dylan sada ovdje, imate li ideju što biste ga pitali?" Njegov otac je odgovorio: "Naravno da imam. Pitao bih ga kog vraga je mislio da radi." Sue je pogledala u pod i malo razmislila. Digla je pogled i rekla: "Pitala bih ga da mi oprosti što sam mu bila majka i što nisam znala što se zbiva u njegovoj glavi."
When I had dinner with her a couple of years later -- one of many dinners that we had together -- she said, "You know, when it first happened, I used to wish that I had never married, that I had never had children. If I hadn't gone to Ohio State and crossed paths with Tom, this child wouldn't have existed, and this terrible thing wouldn't have happened. But I've come to feel that I love the children I had so much that I don't want to imagine a life without them. I recognize the pain they caused to others, for which there can be no forgiveness, but the pain they caused to me, there is," she said. "So while I recognize that it would have been better for the world if Dylan had never been born, I've decided that it would not have been better for me."
Kada sam nakon par godina s njom jeo večeru -- jednu od naših mnogih večera -- rekla je: "Kada se to tek dogodilo, priželjkivala sam da se nikad nisam udala, da nikad nisam imala djecu. Da nisam otišla u Ohio i susrela Toma, ovo dijete ne bi postojalo i ova užasna stvar se ne bi nikad dogodila. No s vremenom sam počela osjećati da toliko volim djecu koju sam dobila da ne želim zamisliti život bez njih. Uviđam da za bol koju su nanijeli drugima nema oprosta, no za bol koju su nanijeli meni, ima. Iako uviđam da bi za svijet bilo bolje da se Dylan nikad nije rodio, odlučila sam da to ne bi bilo bolje za mene."
I thought it was surprising how all of these families had all of these children with all of these problems, problems that they mostly would have done anything to avoid, and that they had all found so much meaning in that experience of parenting. And then I thought, all of us who have children love the children we have, with their flaws. If some glorious angel suddenly descended through my living-room ceiling and offered to take away the children I have and give me other, better children -- more polite, funnier, nicer, smarter --
Pomislio sam kako je iznenađujuće da sve obitelji s djecom sa svim tim problemima, problemima za koje bi učinili sve da ih izbjegnu, su pronašli toliko smisla u roditeljstvu. Zatim sam pomislio, svi mi koji imamo djecu volimo tu djecu zajedno s njihovim manama. Da se blistavi anđeo iznenada spusti kroz strop moje dnevne sobe i ponudi mi da će djecu koju imam zamijeniti drugom, boljom djecom - pristojnijom, ljubaznijom, pametnijom
(Laughter)
čvrsto bih zgrabio djecu koju imam i molio da taj strahoviti prizor nestane.
I would cling to the children I have and pray away that atrocious spectacle. And ultimately, I feel that in the same way that we test flame-retardant pajamas in an inferno to ensure they won't catch fire when our child reaches across the stove, so these stories of families negotiating these extreme differences reflect on the universal experience of parenting, which is always that sometimes, you look at your child, and you think, "Where did you come from?"
U konačnici osjećam da na isti način testiramo pidžame otporne na vatru kako bi osigurali da se neće zapaliti kada naše dijete posegne preko štednjaka, tako i ove priče o obiteljima koje savlađuju ekstremne razlike odražavaju univerzalno iskustvo roditeljstva, a to je da ponekad pogledate svoje dijete i pomislite: otkud si ti došao?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
It turns out that while each of these individual differences is siloed -- there are only so many families dealing with schizophrenia, only so many families of children who are transgender, only so many families of prodigies -- who also face similar challenges in many ways -- there are only so many families in each of those categories. But if you start to think that the experience of negotiating difference within your family is what people are addressing, then you discover that it's a nearly universal phenomenon. Ironically, it turns out, that it's our differences and our negotiation of difference that unite us.
Ispostavlja se da, iako je svaka od ovih individualnih razlika zasebna -- postoji određeni broj obitelji koje se nose sa shizofrenijom, samo određeni broj obitelji čija su djeca transrodna, samo određeni broj obitelji s iznimno nadarenom djecom -- koji se suočavaju sa sličnim izazovima -- postoji samo određeni broj obitelji u svakoj od ovih kategorija -- no ako počnete razmišljati da je iskustvo savlađivanja razlika unutar vaše obitelji ono što ljudi pokušavaju riješiti, tada shvatite da se radi o gotovo univerzalnom fenomenu. Ironično, ispostavlja se da su upravo razlike i naše savlađivanje razlika ono što nas ujedinjuje.
I decided to have children while I was working on this project. And many people were astonished and said, "But how can you decide to have children in the midst of studying everything that can go wrong?" And I said, "I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong."
Odlučio sam imati djecu dok sam radio na ovom projektu. Mnogi su bili zaprepašteni i govorili su: "Kako možeš odlučiti imati djecu usred istraživanja što sve može poći po zlu?" Odgovorio sam: "Ne istražujem što sve može poći po zlu. Istražujem koliko ljubavi može postojati čak i kad se čini da sve ide po zlu."
I thought a lot about the mother of one disabled child I had seen, a severely disabled child who died through caregiver neglect. And when his ashes were interred, his mother said, "I pray here for forgiveness for having been twice robbed: once of the child I wanted, and once of the son I loved." And I figured it was possible, then, for anyone to love any child, if they had the effective will to do so.
Puno sam razmišljao o majci jednog djeteta s poteškoćama, djeteta s ozbiljnim invaliditetom koje je umrlo zbog njegovateljeva zanemarivanja. Kada su ga sahranili, njegova majka je rekla: "Molim za oprost jer mi je dvaput oduzeto, jednom dijete koje sam željela i jednom sin kojeg sam voljela." Tada sam shvatio da svatko može voljeti dijete ako imaju stvarnu želju.
So, my husband is the biological father of two children with some lesbian friends in Minneapolis. I had a close friend from college who'd gone through a divorce and wanted to have children. And so she and I have a daughter, and mother and daughter live in Texas. And my husband and I have a son who lives with us all the time, of whom I am the biological father, and our surrogate for the pregnancy was Laura, the lesbian mother of Oliver and Lucy in Minneapolis.
Moj suprug je biološki otac dvoje djece prijateljica lezbijki iz Minneapolisa. Imam blisku prijateljicu s fakulteta koja se razvela, a htjela je imati djecu pa s njom imam kćer i njih dvije žive u Texasu. Moj suprug i ja imamo sina koji živi s nama čiji sam ja biološki otac, a surogat majka je Laura, lezbijska majka Olivera i Lucy iz Minneapolisa.
(Laughter)
(Pljesak)
So --
(Applause)
Ukratko, pet roditelja, četvero djece, tri države.
The shorthand is: five parents of four children in three states.
(Laughter)
Postoje ljudi koji misle da postojanje moje obitelji
And there are people who think that the existence of my family somehow undermines or weakens or damages their family. And there are people who think that families like mine shouldn't be allowed to exist. And I don't accept subtractive models of love, only additive ones. And I believe that in the same way that we need species diversity to ensure that the planet can go on, so we need this diversity of affection and diversity of family in order to strengthen the ecosphere of kindness.
nekako potkopava, oslabljuje ili oštećuje njihovu obitelj. Postoje ljudi koji misle da obitelji poput moje ne bi smjele postojati. Ja ne prihvaćam oduzimajuće modele ljubavi, već samo dodajuće. Vjerujem da kao što je potrebna raznolikost vrsta da bi se osigurao opstanak planete, isto tako je potrebna raznolikost ljubavi i raznolikost obitelji kako bi ojačala ekosfera dobrote.
The day after our son was born, the pediatrician came into the hospital room and said she was concerned. He wasn't extending his legs appropriately. She said that might mean that he had brain damage. Insofar as he was extending them, he was doing so asymmetrically, which she thought could mean that there was a tumor of some kind in action. And he had a very large head, which she thought might indicate hydrocephalus.
Dan nakon što nam se rodio sin, pedijatrica je došla u bolničku sobu i rekla da je zabrinuta. Nije pružao noge kako treba. Rekla je da to možda znači da ima oštećenje mozga. Noge je pružao asimetrično te je ona mislila da to može značiti da ima neku vrst tumora. Također je imao veliku glavu i mislila da to ukazuje na hidrocefalus. Dok mi je govorila sve te stvari,
And as she told me all of these things, I felt the very center of my being pouring out onto the floor. And I thought, "Here I had been working for years on a book about how much meaning people had found in the experience of parenting children who were disabled, and I didn't want to join their number because what I was encountering was an idea of illness." And like all parents since the dawn of time, I wanted to protect my child from illness. And I wanted, also, to protect myself from illness. And yet, I knew from the work I had done that if he had any of the things we were about to start testing for, that those would ultimately be his identity, and if they were his identity, they would become my identity, that that illness was going to take a very different shape as it unfolded.
osjetio sam kako mi utroba tone. Pomislio sam kako godinama radim na knjizi o tome koliko su smisla ljudi našli u iskustvu podizanja djece s poteškoćama, ali ja im se nisam želio pridružiti. Ono s čime sam se suočavao je bila ideja bolesti. I kao i svi roditelji otkad je svijeta, želio sam zaštititi svoje dijete od bolesti. Želio sam zaštititi i sebe od bolesti. Ipak sam znao iz rada kojim sam se bavio da bude li imao ijednu od stvari za koje su ga krenuli testirati, one će u konačnici biti njegov identitet i ako budu njegov identitet postat će i moj te će ta bolest poprimiti drugačiji oblik kako vrijeme bude prolazilo.
We took him to the MRI machine, we took him to the CAT scanner, we took this day-old child and gave him over for an arterial blood draw. We felt helpless. And at the end of five hours, they said that his brain was completely clear and that he was by then extending his legs correctly. And when I asked the pediatrician what had been going on, she said she thought in the morning, he had probably had a cramp.
Odveli smo ga na magnetsku rezonancu i CT, djete staro jedan dan smo odveli na vađenje krvi. Osjećali smo se bespomoćno. Pet sati kasnije rekli su da mu je mozak potpuno čist i da je počeo pružati noge kako treba. Kada sam upitao pedijatricu što je bilo, rekla mi je da je vjerojatno imao grč u nozi.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But I thought --
Pomislio sam kako mi je majka bila u pravu.
(Laughter)
I thought how my mother was right. I thought, "The love you have for your children is unlike any other feeling in the world. And until you have children, you don't know what it feels like.
Pomislio sam kako ljubav prema svom djetetu nije usporediva s nijednim drugim osjećajem i dok nemate djecu, ne znate kako je to.
I think children had ensnared me the moment I connected fatherhood with loss. But I'm not sure I would have noticed that if I hadn't been so in the thick of this research project of mine. I'd encountered so much strange love, and I fell very naturally into its bewitching patterns. And I saw how splendor can illuminate even the most abject vulnerabilities.
Mislim da su me djeca uhvatila u zamku onaj trenutak kad sam povezao očinstvo s gubitkom. No nisam siguran da bih to primjetio da nisam bio usred svog istraživačkog projekta. Susreo sam toliko neobične ljubavi te sam se prirodno uklopio u njen očaravajući obrazac. Vidio sam kako sjaj može osvijetliti čak i najbijednije ranjivosti.
During these 10 years, I had witnessed and learned the terrifying joy of unbearable responsibility, and I had come to see how it conquers everything else. And while I had sometimes thought the parents I was interviewing were fools, enslaving themselves to a lifetime's journey with their thankless children and trying to breed identity out of misery, I realized that day that my research had built me a plank and that I was ready to join them on their ship.
Tijekom tih deset godina svjedočio sam i učio o zastrašujućoj radosti nepodnošljive odgovornosti te sam spoznao kako pobjeđuje sve ostalo. Iako sam ponekad mislio da su roditelji koje sam intervjuirao budale koje su se osudile na doživotno putovanje s nezahvalnom djecom i koje pokušavaju izroditi identitet iz jada, shvatio sam da mi je moje istraživanje izgradilo most te da sam bio spreman pridružiti im se na njihovom putovanju.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Pljesak)
(Applause and cheers) Thank you.