"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."
"Aj v čisto nenáboženských termínoch, homosexualita predstavuje zneužitie sexuálnej schopnosti. Je to patetická, malá a druhoradá náhrada pre realitu -- poľutovaniahodný úlet zo života. A ako taká si nezasluhuje súcit, nezasluhuje si liečbu ako menšinové mučeníctvo, a nezasluhuje si byť považovaná za nič iné ako zhubnú chorobu."
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.
To je z časopisu Time z roku 1966, keď som mal tri roky. A v predchádzajúcom roku, prezident USA vystúpil na podporu manželstiev gejov.
(Applause)
(Potlesk)
And my question is: How did we get from there to here? How did an illness become an identity?
A moja otázka teda znie, ako sme sa dostali od tadiaľ sem. Ako sa choroba stala identitou?
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.
Napríklad, keď som mal 6 rokov, šiel som do obuvy s mojou mamou a bratom. Na konci nákupu topánok, obchodník povedal, že každý z nás si môže domov zobrať balón. Môj brat chcel červený balón a ja som chcel ružový. Moja mama povedala, že si myslela, že si vyberiem modrý.
(Laughter)
Ja som však povedal, že chcem určite ružový.
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 --
A ona mi pripomenula, že moja obľúbená farba je modrá. Fakt, že moja obľúbená farba je teraz modrá, ale som stále gej --
(Laughter)
(Smiech) --
is evidence of both my mother's influence and its limits.
je dôkazom oboch, vplyvu mojej mamy a jeho limitov.
(Laughter)
(Smiech)
(Applause)
(Potlesk)
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."
Keď som bol malý, moja mama hovorievala: "Láska k vlastným deťom nie je ako žiaden iný cit na svete. A dokým nemáš deti, nevieš aké to je." V tom veku som to bral ako najväčší kompliment na svete, že toto hovorí o výchove môjho brata a mňa. Keď som bol v puberte, myslel som, že keď som gej, pravdepodobne nebudem môcť mať rodinu. Keď to povedala, zmocnila sa ma úzkosť. Potom, čo som sa priznal k svojej orientácii a ona to hovorila ďalej, bol som zúrivý. Povedal som: "Som gej a to nie je cesta, ktorou sa budem uberať a chem, aby si to prestala hovoriť."
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.
Pred asi 20 rokmi, ma editori NY Times časopisu požiadali napísať článok o kultúre hluchých. Bol som zaskočený. Myslel som o hluchote celkom ako o chorobe. Tí úbohí ľudia, ktorí nepočujú. Nemohli počuť, čo sme mohli pre nich urobiť? A potom som šiel do sveta hluchých. Šiel som do klubov pre hluchých. Videl som vystúpenia divadiel pre hluchých a poézie pre hluchých. Dokonca som šiel na súťaž Miss Hluchá Amerika v Nashville v Tennessee, kde sa ľudia hádali o hroznom južanskom škrabopise.
(Laughter)
(Smiech)
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.
A ako som sa ponáral stále hlbšie do sveta hluchých, presvedčil som sa, že hluchota je kultúra a ľudia vo svete hluchých, ktorí povedali: "Nechýba nám schopnosť počuť, patríme do kúltúry", hovorili niečo naozaj pravdivé. Nebola to moja kultúra, a nechcel som sa k nej hneď pripojiť, ale ocenil som, že to kultúra bola a pre ľudí, ktorí sú jej členmi, mala rovnakú hodnotu ako Latino kultúra alebo gej kultúra alebo židovská kultúra. Bola presvedčivá dokonca rovnako ako americká kultúra.
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?
Následne mala kamoška kamoša dcéru, ktorá bola trpaslík. Keď sa jej dcéra narodila, náhle sa ocitla pri riešení otázky, ktorá mi teraz pripadá veľmi dôležitá. Riešila otázku, čo robiť s týmto dieťaťom. Mala povedať: "Si ako ostatní, len o málo nižšia?" Alebo sa mala pokúsiť vytvoriť nejaký druh trpasličej identity, spojiť sa s Malými ľuďmi Ameriky, začať sledovať čo sa pre trpaslíkov robí?
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.
Naraz som si pomyslel, väčšina hluchých detí sa rodí počujúcim rodičom. Títo počujúci rodičia sa snažia ich vyliečiť. Títo hluchí ľudia počas dospievania objavia komunitu. Väčšina gejov sa rodí heterosexuálnym rodičom. Títo rodičia chcú, aby fungovali v tom, čo vnímajú ako mainstreamový svet, títo gejovia musia potom objaviť svoju identitu neskôr. A tu bola moja kamarátka pozerajúc sa na tieto otázky identity jej trpaslíčej dcéry. Pomyslel som si, je to tu zas: Rodina, ktorá sa považuje za normálnu s dieťaťom, ktoré je nezvyčajné. A prišiel som na myšlienku, že existujú dva druhy identít.
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.
Identity, ktoré sú vertikálne, ktoré sú predávané z generácie na generáciu. Tieto sú ako etnicita, národnosť, jazyk, často náboženstvo. To sú veci, ktoré máte spoločné s rodičmi a vašimi deťmi. A zatiaľ čo niektoré môžu byť obtiažne, nepokúšame sa ich liečiť. Môžeš sa prieť, či je v USA ťažšie byť -- bez ohľadu na nášho prezidenta -- byť farebným. A nemáme nikoho, kto by sa snažil uistiť, že ďalšia generácia detí afro-američanov a aziatov sa narodí so smotanovou kožou a blond vlasmi.
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.
Nachádzajú sa tu iné identity, ktoré sa učíš od svojich rovestníkov. Nazval som ich horizontálne identity, pretože rovestníci sú horizontálnou skúsenosťou. Sú to identity nepriateľské voči tvojim rodičom a ktoré objavíš, keď ich uvidíš u rovestníkov. A tieto identity, tieto horizontálne identity, sa ľudia takmer vždy pokúšajú vyliečiť.
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.
Chcel som sa pozrieť na to, aký je to proces, cez ktorý ľudia majúci tieto identity, získajú k nim dobrý vzťah. Pre mňa to vyzerá tak, že existujú 3 úrovne akceptácie, ktoré musia nastať. Je to seba-akceptácia, akceptácia v rodine a sociálna akceptácia. Nie vždy sa však zhodujú.
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.
Často krát sú ľudia majúci tieto potreby veľmi nahnevaní, lebo sa cítia, akoby ich rodičia nemilovali, pričom čo sa stalo je, že ich ich rodičia neakceptujú. Láska je niečo, čo je ideálne bezpodmienečné vo vzťahu medzi rodičom a dieťaťom. No akceptácia je niečo, čo si vyžaduje čas. Vždy si to vyžaduje čas.
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.
Jeden z trpaslíkov, ktorého som spoznal sa volal Clinton Brown. Keď sa narodil, diagnostikovali mu diastrofický dwarfismus, veľmi vážne postihnutie, jeho rodičom oznámili, že nebude nikdy chodiť, hovoriť, nebude mať intelektuálnu kapacitu a zrejme ich dokonca ani nerozpozná. Bolo im naznačené, aby ho nechali v nemocnici, kde v tichosti zomrie. A jeho mama povedal, že to neurobí.
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.
Zobrala ho domov. Napriek tomu, že nemala veľa vzdelania a financií, našla najlepšieho doktora v krajine, zaoberajúceho sa týmto ochorením, a zariadila Clintnovi stretnutie. V piebehu detsva, mal 30 vážnych operačných procedúr. V nemocnici strávil všetok tento čas, počas ktorého prebiehali tieto procedúri, a ako výsledok môže dnes chodiť.
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.
Počas toho, ako tam bol, posielali mu tam školiteľov, aby mu pomohli s jeho školskou prípravou. Pripravoval sa tvrdo, lebo tam nebolo nič iného na práci. Dosiahol úroveň vzdelania, ktorú predtým nedosiahol žiaden iný člen jeho rodiny. Bol prvým z rodiny, kto išiel na vysokú školu, kde žil na internáte a jazdil na špeciálne upravenom aute, ktoré vyhovovalo jeho netypickému telu.
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.
A jeho mama povedala tento príbeh príchodu domov v jeden deň -- navštevoval vysokú školu neďaleko -- povedala: "Videla som auto, ktoré môžeš vždy rozpoznať, na parkovisku pred barom," (Smiech).
(Laughter)
"Pomyslela som si, oni majú 180 cm, on má 90 cm.
"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 ..."
Dve pivá su pre neho ako štyri pre nich." Pokračovala: "Vedela som, že tam nemôžem ísť a rušiť ho, ale šla som domov, a poslala som mu osem správ na mobil." "Potom som si pomyslela, keby niekto povedal, keď sa narodil, že moje budúce starosti budú, že šiel piť a jazdiť so spolužiakmi -- " (Potlesk)
(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."
Povedal som jej, "Čo myslíš, že si urobila, aby si mu pomohla stať sa touto charizmatickou, dokonalou a úžasnou osobou?" Odpovedala: "Čo som spravila? Milovala som ho, to je všetko. Clinton mal v sebe vždy toto svetlo. A jeho otec a ja sme boli dostatočne šťastní byť prvými, ktorí to v ňom videli."
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."
Budem citovať z iného časopisu zo 60-tych rokov. Tento je z roku 1968 -- Atlantský mesačník, hlas liberálnej Ameriky -- napísaný dôležitým bio-etikom. Hovorí: "Nie je dôvod cítiť vinu za odvrhnutie detí s downovým syndrómom, či už v zmysle schovania v sanatóriu, alebo vo viac zodpovednom, smrteľnom zmysle. Je to smutné, áno -- hrozné. Ale nie je v tom žiadna vina. Skutočná vina vzniká len z priestupku proti osobe, a človek s downovým syndrómom nie je 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.
Veľa atramentu bolo minutého pre enormný pokrok, ktorý sme urobili pri zaobchádzaní s homosexualitou. Skutočnosť, že náš postoj sa zmenil je v titulkách každý deň. No zabudli sme ako sme sa zvykli pozerať na ľudí s inými odlišnosťami, ako sme sa pozerali na ľudí so zdravotným postihnutím, ako sme viedli ľudí k tomu byť neľudský. A zmena, ktorá sa tu dosiahla, ktorá je takmer rovnako radikálna, je tá, ktorej nedávame veľa pozornosti.
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 z rodín, ktoré som navštívil, Tom a Karen Robard-ovci, boli zaskočení, keď im ako mladému a úspešnému new-yourskému páru, oznámili, že ich dieťa má downov sydróm. Mysleli, že vzdelávacie možnosti pre ňho neboli také, aké by mali byť, a tak sa rozhodli vybudovať malé centrum -- dve triedy, ktoré otvorili so zopár inými rodičmi -- pre vzdelávanie detí s D.S. Po rokoch, centrum vyráslo v niečo zvané Cook-ovo centrum, kde sú teraz tisícky a tisícky detí s intelektuálnými postihnutiami, ktoré sú vzdelávané. Od času, keď bol vydaný Atlantický mesačník,
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.
sa očakávaná dĺžka života ľudí s D.S. strojnásobila. Skúsenosti ľudí s D.S. zahŕňajú tých, ktorí sú hercami, spisovateľmi, niektorí sú schopní žiť v dospelosti úplne nezávisle.
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."
Robard-ovci s tým majú veľa spoločného. Spýtal som sa: "Ľutujete to? Chceli by ste aby vaše dieťa nemalo D.S.? Želali by ste si o tom nikdy nepočuť?" Jeho otec prekvapivo odpovedal: "Teda, pre Dávida, nášho syna to ľutujem, pretože pre Dávida, je to ťažká cesta v tomto svete a rád by som mu dal ľahší život. No myslím, že ak by sme stratili každého s D.S., bola by to katastrofická strata." A Karen Robard-ová povedala: "Súhlasím 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."
Pre Dávida by som to vyliečila hneď aby som mu dala ľahší život. Ak mám však hovoriť sama za seba -- dobre, pred 23 rokmi, keď sa narodil by som nikdy neverila že sa dostanem do bodu -- hovorím teraz za seba, spravilo ma to oveľa lepšou a milšou a oveľa viac zmysluplnou v mojom živote, že by som sa toho nevzdala nikdy v živote za nič na svete."
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.
Sme v bode, kedy sociálna akceptácia pre tieto a veľa iných je na vzostupe. A zároveň žijeme v dobe, kedy naša schopnosť eliminovať tieto podmienky dosiahla výšku, ktorú sme si predtým nemohli predstaviť. Väčšina hluchých novorodencov v USA dostane Cochlear-ove implantáty, ktoré sa dávajú do mozgu a spoja sa s príjmačom, a ktoré im umožňujú získať faksimile sluchu a používať ústny prejav. Zlúčenina testovaná na myšiach, BMN-111, je užitočná v prevencii pôsobenia achondroplasického génu. Achondroplázia je jedna z najrozšírenejších foriem liliputánstva, a myši, ktorým bol podaný tento liek a ktoré tento gén mali, vyrástli do normálnej veľkosti. Testovanie na ľuďoch je za rohom. Existujú krvné testy, ktoré robia pokrok, ktorý umožný objaviť D.S. zreteľnejšie a skôr počas tehotenstva, ako kedykoľvek predtým, urobí pre ľudí ľahšie a ľahšie eliminovať také tehotenstvo, alebo ho ukončiť. A tak máme oboje, sociálny pokrok a medicínsky pokrok.
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.
Verím v oba z nich. Verím, že sociálny pokrok je fantastický a zmysluplný a úžasný, a myslím si to isté o medicínskom pokroku. No myslím, že je tragédia, ak jeden z nich nevidí ten druhý. Keď vidím, ako sa vzájomne pretínajú v podmienkach ako tie tri, ktoré som práve popísal, niekedy myslím, že to je ako v týchto momentoch opery, keď si hrdinka uvedomí, že miluje heroín presne v tom momente, keď leží na konci na gauči. (Smiech)
(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?
Musíme myslieť na to, ako vnímame liečby súhrnne. Často krát je otázka rodičovstva, čo na svojich deťoch oceňujeme a z čoho ich chceme liečiť?
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.
Jim Sinclair, prominentný autistický aktivista, povedal: "Keď rodičia povedia, že by si želali aby ich dieťa nemalo autizmus, hovoria v skutočnosti o želáni aby toto dieťa neexistovalo a namiesto toho mali iné dieťa, neautistické. Prečítaj si to znova. To je to, čo počujeme, keď sa sťažuješ na našu existenciu. To je, čo počujeme, keď sa modlíš za naše vyliečenie -- tvoje najláskavejšie želanie pre nás -- je to, vďaka ktorému jedného dna prestaneme existovať a staneme sa cudzincami, ktorých môžeš milovať." Je to veľmi extrémny pohľad na vec, ale poukazuje na realitu, ktorej čelia ľudia so životom, ktorý majú a nechcú byť liečení, zmenení alebo eliminovaní. Chcú byť kýmkoľvek sú, kýmkoľvek sa stali.
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.
Jenda z rodín, ktorú som navštívil kvôli tomuto projektu, bola rodina Dylana Klebolda, páchateľa Kolumbijského masakru. Trvalo dlho presvedčiť ich, aby so mnou hovorili, a akonáhle súhlasili, boli tak plný svojim príbehom, že o tom nemohli prestať rozprávať. Prvý víkend, ktorý som s nimi strávil -- prvý z množstva -- nahral som viac ako 20 hodín rozhovoru. A v Nedeľu večer sme boli všetci vyšťavení.
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."
Sedeli sme v kuchyni. Sue Kleboldová upratovala večeru. Spýtal som sa: "Keby tu bol teraz Dylan, viete, čo by ste sa ho chceli spýtať?" Jeho otec odpovedal: "S istotou viem. Chcel by som sa ho spýtať, čo si do čerta myslel, že robí." Sue sa pozrela na zem, a na chvíľu sa zamyslela. Potom sa pozrela späť a povedala: "Spýtala by som sa ho, aby mi odpustil za to, že som ako matka nikdy nevedela, čo sa deje v jeho hlave."
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."
Keď som s ňou večeral o pár rokov neskôr -- pri jednej z množstva večier, ktoré sme spolu mali -- povedala: "Vieš, keď sa to stalo, želala som si aby som nikdy nebola vydatá, nikdy nemala deti. Keby som sa neodsťahovala do Ohia a nestretla Toma, toto dieťa by nikdy neexistovalo a táto hrozná vec by sa nestala. No uvedomila som si, že milujem svoje deti tak veľmi, že si nechcem ani predstaviť život bez nich. Rozpoznávam bolesť, ktorú spôsobili iným, pre ktorú neexistuje ospravedlnenie, ale bolesť, ktorú spôsobili mne, je tam." Pokračovala: "Zatiaľ čo som rozpoznala, že by bole pre svet lepšie, keby sa Dylan nenarodil, rozhodla som sa, že by to nebolo lepšie pre mňa."
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 --
Pomyslel som si, že je prekvapivé ako všetky tieto rodiny majúce tieto deti so všetkými týmito problémami, problémami, pre vyriešenie ktorých urobili všetko, všetky našli veľký zmysel v tejto skúsenosti rodičovstva. A potom som si pomyslel, všetci, kto máme deti, ľúbime deti, ktoré máme, aj s ich chybami. Keby nejaký slávny anjel náhle zostúpil cez strop mojej obývačky a ponúkol sa, že moje deti zoberie preč a dá mi iné, lepšie -- slušnejšie, zábavnejšie, milšie, múdejšie --
(Laughter)
Schytil by som deti, ktoré mám a modlil sa aby toto strašidlo odišlo.
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?"
Bezpodmienečne cítim, že tým istým spôsobom ako testujeme ohňovzdorné pyžamo v plameni, aby sme sa uistili, že nezačne horieť, keď sa naše dieťa načiahne cez kachle, tak isto tieto príbehy rodín riešiacich tieto extrémne odlišnosti, reflektujú univerzálnu skúsenosť rodičovstva, keď sa niekedy zapozeráš na svoje dieťa a pomyslíš si, odkiaľ si prišiel?
(Laughter)
(Smiech)
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.
Ukazuje sa, že aj keď každý z týchto individuálnych rozdielov je obmedzený -- existuje len určité množstvo rodín riešiacih schizofréniu, určité množstvo rodín, ktorých deti sú transrodové, určité množstvo rodín so zázračnými deťmi -- ktoré čelia podobným problémom rôznymi cestami -- existuje určité množstvo rodín pre každú z týchto kategórií -- že ak začneš myslieť, že skúsenosti z vyjasňovania rozdielov v rámci tvojej rodiny je čo ľudia adresujú, objavíš, že je to takmer univerzálny fenomén. Ironicky sa ukazuje, že sú to naše odlišnosti, a vyjasňovanie odlišností, čo nás spája.
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."
Rozhodol som sa mať deti počas práce na tomto projekte. A veľa ľudí sa divilo a hovorilo: "Ale ako môžeš chcieť mať deti počas štúdia všetkého zlého, čo sa pri tom môže stať?" Odpovedal som: "Neštudujem čo všetko zlé sa môže stať. Čo študujem je to, ako veľa lásky môže existovať, dokonca aj vtedy, ak to vyzerá, že sa všeko uberá zlým smerom."
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.
Veľa som premýšlal o matke jedného postihnutého dieťaťa, ktoré som videl, ťažko postinuté dieťa, ktoré zomrelo z nedbanlivosti opatrovníka. Keď ho pochovali, jeho mama povedala: "Modlím sa za odpustenie toho, že som bola dva krát okradnutá, raz o dieťa, ktoré som chcela a raz o dieťa, ktoré som milovala." Uvedomil som si, že potom je možné pre každého milovať akékoľvek dieťa, ak majú dostatočnú vôľu tak učiniť.
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.
Takže môj manžel je biologický otec dvoch detí lezbických partneriek v Minneapolis. Mal som blízku kamošku z vysokej, ktorá sa rozviedla a chcela mať deti. A tak máme spolu dcéru, matka s dcérou žijú v Texase. Môj manžel a ja máme dieťa, ktoré s nami žije, ktorého biologickým otcom som ja, a našou náhradnou matkou bola Laura, lezbická matka Olivera a Lucy z Minneapolisu.
(Laughter)
(Potlesk)
So --
(Applause)
Skrátene je to päť rodičov štyroch detí v troch štátoch.
The shorthand is: five parents of four children in three states.
(Laughter)
A pritom existujú ľudia, ktorí si myslia, že existencia mojej rodiny,
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.
nejako podrýva, znevažuje alebo poškodzuje ich rodiny. A sú ľudia, ktorí si myslia, že rodiny ako moja, by nemali mať povolenú existenciu. A ja neakceptujem podradné modely lásky, len tie zásadné. A verím, že rovnako ako potrebujeme diverzitu druhov, pre zaistenie pokračovania života na našej planéte, tak isto potrebujeme diverzitu lásky a diverzitu rodín pre posilnenie ekosféry láskavosti.
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.
Deň po tom, ako sa narodil náš syn, detská lekárka prišla do nemocničnej izby a povedala, že má obavy. Nerozťahoval nohy ako by mal. Povedala, že to môže značiť poškodenie mozgu. Ak ich rozťahoval, robil to tak asymetricky, že to mohlo znamenať, že má nádor nejakého druhu. A tiež mal veľmi veľkú hlavu, čo podľa nej mohlo indikovať hydrocephalus. A ako mi povedala všetky tieto veci,
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.
Cítil som ako sa podstata mojej osobnosti skladá na zem. Pomyslel som si, tu som robil celé roky na knihe o tom aký zmysel našli ľudia so skúsenosťami rodičovstva detí, ktoré sú postihnuté a nechcel som sa k nim pripojiť. Pretože to, čomu som čelil, bola idea choroby. A ako všetci rodičia od úsvitu časov, som chcel svoje dieťa ochrániť pred chorobou. A rovnako som chcel pred chorobou ochrániť mňa. A teraz, viem z práce, ktorú som vykonal, že ak by mal ktorúkoľvek z vecí, na ktoré sme ho začali testovať, tie sa stanú bezpodmienečne jeho identitou, a ak sa stanú jeho identitou, stánu sa aj mojou identitou, takžé tá choroba bude mať veľmi odlišnú podobu ako sa rozšírila. Zobrali sme ho do MRI stroja, dali sme ho do CAT skeneru,
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.
Zobrali sme toto jednodňové dieťa a brali mu krv. Cítili sme sa beznádejne. Po piatich hodinách, povedali, že jeho mozog je úplne v poriadku a že rozťahuje nohy korektne. A keď som sa spýtal detskej doktorky, čo sa to deje, povedala, že ráno mohol mať pravdepodobne kŕč. (Smiech)
(Laughter)
Ale pomyslel som si akú pravdu mala moja mama.
But I thought --
(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.
Myslel som, že láska, ktorú máš pre svoje deti, nie je ako žiaden iný cit na svete, a dokým nemáš deti, nevieš aký je to pocit.
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.
Myslím, že deti ma ulapili v momente ako som sa stal otcom. No nie som si istý, či by som si to uvedomil, keby som sa neponoril tak hlboko pri výskume tohto môjho projektu. Postrehol som tak veľa zvláštnej lásky, a cítil som sa veľmi prirodzene vo vnútri týchto vzorcov. A videl som ako nádherne môže osvetliť dokonca aj tie najbiednejšie chyby.
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.
Počas týchto 10 rokov, som bol svedkom a naučil som sa desivej radosti z neznesiteľnej zodpovednosti, a naučil som sa vidieť ako pohltí všetko ostatné. A síce som si niekedy myslel, že rodičia, ktorých navštevujem sú hlupáci, vrhajúci sa do otroctva celoživotného dobradružstva s ich nevďačnými deťmi, snažiac sa vytvoriť identitu z mizérie, uvedomil som si ten deň, že môj výskum ma posilnil a bol som pripravený ich pripojiť na ich ceste.
Thank you.
Ďakujem.
(Applause and cheers) Thank you.
(Potlesk)