Host: Meg Bowles
[overture music
Meg Bowles: [00:00:13] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. I'm a blusher. And if someone says, “Are you blushing?” It accelerates to full on magenta. I chalk it up to my Scottish roots. But let's just say it's hard to hide my embarrassment. There are all kinds of situations that cause this embarrassment. Like, the time you enthusiastically waved at someone, waving in your direction, only to realize they were actually waving at someone behind you, or you're in that awkward situation where you absolutely know the person, but you cannot, for the life of you remember their name and they're waiting for you to introduce them. Or, perhaps you're a teenager. And in that case, it's probably anything and everything your parents do in public. We all have our moments, situations that looking back make us cringe.
Our first story is easily a 9.1 on the embarrassment Richter scale. So much so, in order to spare her mother's blushes, this storyteller chooses to only be identified by her first name. She shared it at one of our open-mic StorySLAMs in New Orleans, where we partner with New Orleans Public Radio. Live from Cafe Istanbul, here's Marissa.
[cheers and applause]
Marissa: [00:01:33] One year, eight months and eleven days ago was the biggest day of my life to that point. It was the day that I would finally, officially fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a scientist. I'm obsessed with science. I especially like worms, bugs, parasites, ants, mosquitoes. I like mosquitoes so much that my husband saves them from me when he kills them, so I can identify what species they are. [audience laughter]
To become a scientist, you have to get a PhD. And at that time, I had been working towards my PhD for five long, difficult years. At the culmination of this process, I have to give my dissertation defense or defend my research, which is composed of an hour-long presentation to the general public, friends, family, whoever wants to come, and my dissertation committee, which was composed of five experts in my field.
After I'm done with that presentation, I sit for two hours and they question me on why I did, what I did, how I did. And then they ultimately decide whether I pass or fail. If I fail, that is the end of the road for me as a scientist. My life’s dream crushed.
The room where I was to give my defense was small, but it was packed with about 30 or so people, standing room only. There were people out the door. My PowerPoint presentation was projected against a wall. Immediately to the left of it were video projections of people who were live videoconferencing in. They were projected really big. Their faces looking at the computer, and I remember thinking to myself, I really hope that they know that their faces are being projected on this wall right next to my presentation and don't do anything embarrassing. [audience laughter]
So, here we are. March 29th, 2018, 12 o’clock noon. Everything in my life had led up to this moment. It's go time. I start. “Hi, my name is Marissa. Thank you for coming to my defense. Today, I will be speaking about the effects of SIV on adipose tissue. When out of the corner of my eye.” I see a notification pop up on that video conference wall. It says someone has joined the meeting. And it's my mom. [audience laughter] And I'm so excited, because my mom was able to watch my defense from where she lives in Florida. Well, I was excited. Until her video clicks on, and suddenly, all you see is my mom, fresh from the shower, wearing nothing but a towel from the waist down. [audience cheers and laughter]
I scream bloody murder. “Oh, God, mom, no…” I run to the front of the room. I smash myself against the wall to cover her naked body failing to realize that she is now being projected directly on my back. [audience laughter] I also don't realize, because I can't see but everyone else can see, that she hears me scream and army style, drops to the floor and rolls slowly out of the frame. [audience cheers and laughter]
I'm still here. Yeah. So, I am staring at the audience in horror. [audience laughter] No one says a word. [audience laughter] And finally, I plead, “Can somebody please help me?” After what feels like the longest 60 seconds of my life, IT cuts the feed. [audience laughter]
I walk back to the podium slowly processing the situation, struggling to breathe. And I look up and I make eye contact with my fiancé, who has just seen my mother's tits. [audience laughter] Then I make eye contact with my dad, who has just seen my mom and his recent ex-wife expose herself to an entire room full of strangers. Then I make eye contact with my dissertation committee, all five of them who are sitting front and center, who have all just seen my mother's breasts. I have no choice. I have to continue. And so, I take a deep breath, I gather myself and I proceed one more time into my presentation.
So, after the presentation's over, I sit down for the two hours of questioning. I also found out after the fact that everything happened so fast that half of the room thought I was just losing my mind [audience laughter] and that this was all part of my presentation. [audience laughter]
Yeah. By the way, I passed. Love you, mom.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Bowles: [00:07:34] Marissa is a scientist in immunology and specializes in infectious disease, and she says she's loving every minute of it. I asked Marissa, how the conversation went when she finally talked to her mother that day.
Marissa: [00:07:49] That day, I called my mom probably eight times before she finally answered around dinner time. So, it was like, all day. [chuckles] When she finally answered, she was just like, “I'm sorry,” [chuckles] in the tiniest voice. I just laughed and I told her it was okay and that I passed. [laughs] Every time my mom comes to a talk, we confirm that she's planning to attend fully clothed. [laughs] It just never gets old.
Meg Bowles: [00:08:30] Words of wisdom for Marissa, “Be grateful for those embarrassing moments,” because it makes other things. And in her case, other presentations feel like a breeze.
Embarrassing situations come in all shapes and sizes. I've heard so many stories of people who've accidentally shared something in the family group chat that caused generational chaos or sent a message intended for one person, but accidentally shared their thoughts on the movie they saw last night to all in attendance for the legal seminar over Zoom.
Our next storyteller, Azhar Bande-Ali, can relate. Azhar told this story at The Bell House in Brooklyn where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here is Azhar.
[cheers and applause]
Azhar: [00:09:15] I have a weird relationship with self-doubt. I was sitting down there and I was fine. And then I got to the stairs and I'm freaking out. [audience cheers and applause] That wasn't for sympathy to lead into the next part. [audience laughter]
When I look in the mirror, I don't see a happy, healthy, somewhat intelligent man who's loved unconditionally by everybody. I see this Indian dude that tries too hard and smiles too much. I am my therapist's retirement plan. [audience laughter] But all of that stopped one day on a summer morning in the park in Atlanta when my friend took the best picture of me ever. [audience laughter]
Yeah, I was 23 years old. I had just lost some weight, and I looked good. I was resting on my elbows, leaning back, the sun in my face. I look like a baseball player that's sliding into base, just casually. [audience laughter] My face was tilted just the right way, so that the profile that looked at the camera I decided was going to be the only profile that any camera would ever see for the rest of my life. It was a good photo. It's the best photo I've ever taken. I saw it when my friend posted it on Facebook, the following Monday morning. I got to work, and I saw it, and I copied the link, and I sent it to all my friends, and I sent it to my mom and I said, “Mom, I'm cute.” [audience laughter] And then I went back to work. I sent some emails and I went to a meeting. I came back to my desk and I had 75 unread emails. That doesn't happen.
So, it turns out, before I went to my meeting, I'd sent an email to a thread with 400 people in America, Europe and India. [audience laughter] The self-doubt came back. [audience laughter] “Uh-Oh, you're about to get fired.”
I sat down and I started going through the email. I kept scrolling, and one after another, again and again and again. I found Photoshop images. Somebody had plopped me, or pulled me out of the park and plopped me on a door in the middle of an ocean at the end of Titanic. [audience laughter] I was in the arms of Rafiki at the top of a rock in The Lion King. Somebody cropped my face and put it on Miley Cyrus in the Wrecking Ball video. [audience laughter] And then my face was the wrecking ball. It's the most creative shit I've ever seen. [audience laughter]
It was hilarious. Eventually, people made T-shirts of my face. People started coming to my office and asking for the email guy. I realized I looked good in those pictures. [audience laughter, cheers and applause]
I killed the productivity of an entire office for weeks. [audience laughter] I didn't get fired. I eventually got promoted, which was nice. [audience laughter]
Life went back to normal. Next year, I decided I was going to run the New York City marathon as a charity runner, and I needed to raise $5,000. I got to $2,500 and then I hit a wall. No money was coming in. I was training more and more every day, and I was more and more exhausted. I couldn't keep doing the fundraisers. It was stressful.
I used to have these nightmares of 5,000 kids lining up to get food. I would get to the 2,500th kid and look down and I would have no more food, and I would have to turn away each one of those kids one after another. [audience laughter] I would wake up in the embrace of self-doubt, “Ooh, I'm not cut out for this. Ooh, I'm disappointing a lot of people. What if I don't get to run?” [sighs] And then it hit me.
I woke up one day, and I drafted a Facebook post that sounded like a Ponzi scheme invite combined with a kidnapper’s note. [audience laughter] And it said, “I have 50 more of these pictures. I will post the next one when I get $200 donated to my fundraiser.” [audience laughter]I tacked on The Lion King picture to it and I uploaded it to Facebook. Within 30 minutes, I had $200. [audience laughter] Then I did the Titanic one for $500, and then I did Miley Cyrus for $500. Within 48 hours, I had $2,500 and I reached my goal. [audience cheers and applause]
I had an OnlyFans before there was an OnlyFans. [audience laughter] Who's cute now? [audience laughter]
We raised, we gave the money to charity, I crushed the marathon. You'll be happy to know my self-doubt is cured. Nah, I'm kidding. I doubt myself every day. [audience laughter] But what I do now is I doubt the doubt. If I can survive being memed, and if I can raise $5,000 on a whim and I can run a fucking marathon—[audience cheers and applause]—then what's there to doubt about the 20-page presentation that I have to do this week? That shit's easy, yo.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Bowles: [00:16:04] Azhar Bande-Ali still works in tech, but also had the honor of being an artist in residence at the Keepsake House, where he developed a solo show called Curry and Catharsis. Everyone who attended got a T-shirt with his face on it. You can find out more about that story. And yes, we have pictures of those hilarious memes. That's on our website, themoth.org.
[joyful music]
Coming up, being stuck between a rock and a mortifyingly hard place when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[joyful music]
Jay Allison: [00:17:07] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Meg Bowles: [00:17:25] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. So often, people will keep their secret humiliations all to themselves. You know the ones, the thing you did that no one saw, that you can absolutely never repeat or admit to. But if working at The Moth has taught me anything, it's that your most embarrassing moment has the makings to be a good story.
You may know our next storyteller, Gbenga Akinnagbe, from his countless stage, TV and film roles. But what you may not know, is while other celebrities insist on a car and driver, Gbenga prefers his trusty bike.
From a Mainstage we produced in New York City, here's Gbenga Akinnagbe live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Gbenga Akinnagbe: [00:18:12] I love my bike. I love my bike. I take my bike with me everywhere. I live in Brooklyn. It's the best way to get around the city. I love my bike so much, I travel with it. I have a bike case. I put my bike in the bike case. I check it in like luggage. It is luggage.
On this particular day, I'm in Los Angeles for a week of meetings. I have a meeting at Warner Bros studios that I'm very excited about. I check my GPS, and it says 40 minutes to get there. No problem. I jump on my bike and I head out. My GPS then tells me I need to turn off road to get to where I'm going. I get off my bike, I start to walk it onto the dirt path. The moment I step onto the dirt path, my GPS goes out. No problem. I know the direction in which I need to go. I'll eventually get to Warner Bros, so I keep going.
Path starts meandering, disappearing, reappearing. It occurs to me that this path is not actually a path, but a dried-out creek bed, and I've been following it for about five minutes. I'm like, “Well, okay, this is a little bump in the road, but I'll just keep going.” Eventually, the ground in front of me starts to incline to a little hill. I'm walking my bike up this hill. The hill gets more and more steep. I find that I have to start to use my hands to climb this hill. That's cool. That's cool. I'm pretty rugged. I can do this. I can use my hands to climb this hill and take my bike with me. No problem.
As I continue on, I find that I have to now use my entire body to climb this hill. The sun is baking down on me. I'm higher and higher on this hill. For a second, I consider going back, until I turn around and I look down and I'm struck with just how high I am right now on this hill. I realize it's more dangerous to go down than it is to go up. So, I decide that I should probably stop and rest, because I'm getting more and more tired. So, I take my bike and I wedge it between some bushes, and I grab one bush and it comes right out of the ground.
I start to laugh at how ridiculous this all is, because I got up this morning thinking, I'm going to a meeting at Warner Bros. [audience laughter] It occurs to me that it's time I should be honest with myself, and that this is not a hill, but a mountain. And for some reason, I’ve accidentally started to climb this mountain. [audience laughter] And then I start to think like, “There's a very good chance, I'm not going to make it out of here.” [audience laughter]
I start to think like, “I probably might need to get help,” because I don't know where I am. I don't have water, I'm very tired, and the sun is getting stronger. [chuckles] And so, I take out my cell phone. Of course, my cell phone has like one bar and I'm thinking, “Well, who am I going to text?” Everyone in New York, well, they're in New York and everyone in LA that I know, I can't even get my friends in LA to come pick me up at the airport. Let alone find me on some random mountain in Los Angeles. [audience laughter]
I was like, “I'm not even going to try.” Just then, I look up. Across from me, on the other mountain, facing the mountain I am on, is a ridge. And I see a man. He's just been staring at me. [audience laughter] His dogs are just running around playing. It was such a beautiful picture. I felt such tragedy and fear. All I wanted to do was scream out to this guy for help. I knew that, one, he would not hear me. And two, there was very little he could do to help me. And so, I decided I might have to just go on. Because I have a book bag, I can't just put my bike on my back. I have to crawl about 2ft at a time and reach back and pull my bike. I'm dragging my bike up the mountain across bushes and rocks, watching my beautiful machine get beat up, but I will not leave my bike behind.
And so, I continue up and I see something above me. And it looks like antenna. I know that antennas are usually on some sort of platform, some firm ground. Maybe if I get up there, I might be able to save myself. I don't know what's up there, but at least right now, I have hope. So, I keep climbing. I keep climbing and I crawl over the edge of this mountain onto where this antenna is. Right by the antenna is a path. I am shaking. I'm so excited. My face is covered in mountain dust, my eyes, the sweat all over my helmets askew. I'm like, I look very disheveled.
I look up, and there is a woman walking towards me. And I'm thinking, “I don't want to scare this woman, but I really need her help.” [chuckles] And so, I walk towards her. She's approaching me. I'm approaching her. We're about 10ft from each other when at the same time we say to each other, “Do you know how to get off of this mountain?” [audience laughter]
I'm like, “No, no, I thought you would tell me. I don't know where I am. I'm so lost. Please help me.” She's like, “Well, what about the way you just came that path?” I said, “I didn't come from that path. I climbed off this mountainside. I don't know what's going on.” I was like, “What about you? What's back where you came from?” She's like, “Well, we can go back where I came from and see if we can find our way.”
So, she turns around. We walked back to where she came. We run into a group of hikers. Now, they were real hikers. The two of us, we were just like lost people in the wilderness, on the edge of life and death. And so, they helped her. They tell, they point her in the direction in which she needs to go, and they tell me in the direction I need to go. So, we start walking, me and the hikers. I'm just thinking in my head, “Oh, my God, how ridiculous my life is this morning?” And then all of a sudden, I hear someone say, “Are you the guy from The Wire?” [audience laughter]
“Yes. Yes, I was very fortunate to be part of that show. Yeah, yeah, you can watch it several times and you get something different from it every time. You were right. Yes, yes.” [audience laughter]
And then his friend says, “Do you have any acting advice?” I was like, “Oh, well, theater is good. I like theater. I do theater.” In my mind, I'm just thinking, I just need to get to this meeting. I just need to get off this mountain. They get me to a road, and I ride my bike down this road and I hit Barham Boulevard. I know Barham Boulevard. Warner Bros is on Barham Boulevard. [chuckles] It's three blocks ahead of me. I see it, and I get a phone call, and it's the assistant in my manager's office who's telling me that they want to cancel the meeting for the day, and reschedule to have it later that afternoon in Hollywood back on the other side of the mountain. [audience laughter]
I lose it. I start laughing uncontrollably. I'm just that guy on the side of the road in LA, sun baked, just laughing at the sun. And to this day, I'm not quite sure how I ended up on that mountain or what mountain it was, but I do know that I pay attention to the little things now. All the little things, like GPS instructions. [audience laughter] Whether they're the walking GPS instructions or the biking GPS instructions.
I pay attention to how much weight is in my book bag before I head out in the day, whether I have water. I pay so much attention. I probably pay too much attention, because you never know when the wrong choice might just end you up making life or death decisions on the side of a mountain. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Bowles: [00:26:24] Gbenga Akinnagbe is a successful actor of both stage and screen. He said, “Being an actor, you routinely have to put yourself in embarrassing situations. You have to be willing to fall on your face in front of people. The worst thing you can be is a safe actor.”
As for the getting stuck on the side of a mountain incident, he said, “He wasn't as embarrassed as he was thankful, he survived.” You could see a picture of Gbenga and his bike on our website, themoth.org.
Next up, a different type of situation that leads to mortification, you know, agreeing to something in order to be polite that ends up making you uncomfortable. Like that double date you went on to help your sister out, only to discover your date is your boss' son. The I had the best intention type of embarrassment, which is exactly the term I would use to describe our next story from Jo Richards. She told it at an open-mic StorySLAM competition at Howler in Melbourne, Australia, where we partner with the Australian Broadcast Corporation ABC RM. Here's Jo Richards.
Jo Richards: [00:27:35] I volunteered at an ashram in Lesbos in exchange for accommodation. The only other volunteer was this very tall Israeli man. It seemed very natural that we should just have an affair over chopping vegetables and meditation. [audience laughter]
I left to go to Rome, and he hinted that he wanted to come with me. I said no, because I was meeting a friend. A week later, I went to an internet café, and I received an email from him suggesting that he should come for a week. My immediate response was no. [audience laughter] It felt like that affair had existed in a time of sun, and vegetables, and Grecian stones and olive trees. It was best to just leave it in that time and place. He replied and asked, “Why wouldn't I be open to the possibility?” And now if I received that reply, I would run, because why was he questioning my no. But back then, being younger, I thought, “Oh, yeah, I don't want to be close to possibility. Yeah, I want to be that person that's open and adventurous. Yeah, sure, he should come.”
So, we arranged to meet at Florence train station. I so distinctly remember standing beneath this big electronic dashboard, looking down the line of the railway track and all of these very polished, well-dressed Italians in white and beige coursing past me. And off in the distance, I saw this man get off the train. My whole body went, “Oh, no.” [audience laughter] As he walked towards me, the “no” got louder and louder, and he got closer and closer, and he went to kiss me and I hugged him instead. [audience laughter]
And so, began this torturous few days, because there was nothing in me at the time. I have so much compassion for her that even could conceive that I could be honest and just say, “Actually, hey, this isn't working for me.” Instead, I made my feeling wrong, and I just really struggled with it. How could I feel this after he'd flown all this way for me?
He kept telling me to relax. And of course, that just made everything so much worse. Over the days, I just got more contorted and twisted as I completely invalidated my own experience. It culminated in this fight at another train station in Vernazza. He said he was leaving, because he'd flown all of this way, and I was cold and I was like, “Yay.” [audience laughter]
[00:31:06] And so, I went to wait with him for his train at the train station, because at the time, I thought that was the polite thing to do. We were waiting there, and there was all this tension and turmoil, as if we'd been lovers for years, but we just met a couple of weeks ago. [audience laughter] He was berating me and asking me, why I was having this feeling? I was like, “I don't know.” I just kept looking down this tunnel, this train tunnel and just waiting for the train to come. [audience laughter]
The train just kept getting delayed, and delayed [chuckles] and delayed. [audience laughter] But I sat there politely with him. Finally, it came, and I can't tell you the giddiness that he might actually go and this whole experience might soon be over. [audience laughter] He got up, and picked up his backpack, and he walked towards the door and I played my solemn, I'm sorry role. [audience laughter] And then he turned around and I thought, “Oh, no.” [audience laughter] And he said, “I could have loved you.” [audience laughter]
And the doors closed behind him. [audience laughter and applause]
And it was-- [unintelligible [00:32:50] that moment when you say goodbye, but then you go in the same direction. [audience laughter] He came back, and sat next to me and we waited another two hours for this train to come. [audience laughter]
He did finally get on the train. The liberation, the absolute joy that I felt, I so relished that experience. It was such a contrast of this bow being pulled back and then just this release of this feeling of freedom that I was just free of this whole situation.
And now that I'm grown, what I love most about being grown, is that how I feel is valid. I don't owe anyone my politeness. I can change my mind at any time. I now know that being honest about where I stand is often the kindest thing. What I love most so much is that my yes is a yes and my no is a no. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Bowles: [00:34:35] Jo Richards is a public speaking coach, speech writer and a sovereignty mentor, who coaches and educates on boundaries and personal clarity. She told me that in her early 20s, she couldn't conceive of saying anything that might hurt someone's feelings. She said, “I had to learn that it's okay for others to be disappointed. Being polite over being honest can create a lot of confusion. The story would have been so different if I had simply been able to say, ‘This isn't working for me,’ and we could both go our separate ways.”’
[peaceful music]
Coming up, a neuroscientist confronts her discomfort with emotion when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[peaceful music]
Jay Allison: [00:35:52] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg Bowles: [00:36:06] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. And our final story in this hour comes from Neuroscientist, Dr. Wendy Suzuki, an expert on the brain, where our emotions take hold. And no, understanding the brain doesn't always help with the feelings. Live from Saint Ann's in Brooklyn, here's Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
[cheers and applause]
Wendy Suzuki: [00:36:30] In my family, real emotions were something to be hidden, to be tamped down. I often like to say that you can think of my family like a Japanese-American version of Downton Abbey, without the money, the real estate or the service. [audience laughter] Growing up, showing emotion would call too much attention to yourself. It would embarrass the family. So, no emotions in public, good or bad. But as a neuroscientist, I've always been fascinated with the study of the neurobiology of emotion, even though, personally, my own personal relationship with emotions can be described as a struggle for control.
So, growing up, this was always difficult. When I grew up, this was particularly difficult, because I've always been somebody that cried at weddings. Any and all weddings, even fake TV weddings, I would cry. And so, this struggle would happen all the time in growing up, but I would always try to avoid these situations. Weddings, graduations, eulogies, I couldn't even imagine having to give a eulogy.
So, when my father passed away, I knew I couldn't participate in his eulogy. I remember being so grateful that my younger brother stepped up and he said, “No problem, I will do it.” He gave the most beautiful eulogy for our father. I was filming him as he was telling this beautiful story that I'd never heard before. I could see the emotion welling up, and I could see that struggle that was so familiar to me. I felt so uncomfortable, I had to stop filming. I couldn't put on film that that intimate moment.
Well, about three months later, I was having breakfast. It was 06:30 in the morning, early in the morning in my Manhattan apartment. I wasn't having breakfast. I was actually doing something I do every single morning, which is a tea meditation, which is a meditation over the brewing and savoring of tea. I do this every morning. It grounds me. It opens me up. It sparks creativity.
But that morning, the phone rang, first thing at 06:30 AM. But it was a number from Shanghai. My brother was living in Shanghai, so I picked it up. But it wasn't my brother. It was my brother's business partner who called to tell me that my younger brother had a massive heart attack, and he didn't make it. So, only three months after we lost my father, my younger brother was suddenly and irretrievably gone. Our original family of four were now down to only two.
I remember hanging up that phone. And time stood still. I could feel my heart beating. I could feel the sweat on my palms. It got really quiet, so that all the thoughts in my head got 10 times louder. What do you do when you lose somebody that you thought was going to be there for the rest of your life? And then at some moment, I realized that the only one that didn't know the news was my mother. I couldn't call her to tell her. It was still early. So, I immediately booked a flight from New York to California. I managed to get the most uncomfortable middle seat that any airline had to offer. And not only that, the middle seat's video monitor was broken. [audience laughter]
So, I had six and a half hours there. All I had to do was think about what I was going to say to my mother. I was worried, because her hearing isn't great. I was really scared that I was going to scare her when I came into the house, because I hadn't told her I was coming. So, I get home, I knock really loud. I open the door and I say, “Mom, I'm home. It's Wendy. I'm home.” I scared her. She came down and. But we laughed about it. I'll never forget that that look she had on her face, smiling when she said, “What are you doing here?” I had to tell her that I had the most terrible news, that David was gone.
We stood there and cried together. We sat down, we cried together some more. But that crying was such a relief, because it meant that I had done my job. I had one job to do that day, and only I could have done that job. That cry that we had meant that I fulfilled my job. I did it. But I also knew that there was nobody in the world that my mother needed more at that moment than me, and there was nobody that I needed more in the world than my mother.
So, the next week, I stayed in California. We accepted all the condolence calls and visits. We never knew whether it was going to be crying or laughing and reminiscing. But I could tell you that our favorite visit was when my cousin came over. He walked right in, he opened his laptop, and immediately started showing my mother and I, the most extensive set of vacation photos from his last two trips to Germany and Japan. [audience laughter]
My mom and I looked at each other and we said, “Show me more. What's the next beer stein? What other sushi did you eat?” Because we needed that relief so much. We didn't talk about my brother once, that afternoon. We didn't have to. We knew what we were feeling, and that was such a wonderful relief. So, after the end of that week, I flew back to New York. I felt like my life came to a screeching halt. There were these waves of grief that would come over me. I couldn't control when. They would just suddenly come over me.
To be sure, I know that I'm not the only person to have lost somebody, but I was shocked at how devastating these waves of grief could be, and how much they colored every single moment of my life during that time. Somewhere in the haze of that grief, I realized it was a eulogy to give and that I was the only one that could do it. So, I knew I could write it, but could I actually get through this thing that I had essentially been fearing all of my life without doing the thing that scared me most. Crying incoherently, publicly in front of not only family, but all the friends that were going to come out to my brother's eulogy.
So, a month and a half later, I'm standing in front of 200 friends and family at one of my brother's favorite golf clubs on what would have been his 51st birthday. Behind me, beautiful greens. To my left, there was a beautiful portrait of my brother framed in flowers. And in front of me, 200 faces around round tables looking up at me. And so, I started by telling them that my brother was a legend. He was a legend for all the friends that he made. He was that guy that you wanted to be friends with.
But then I got to that part that I was scared of, the part that I wanted to tell about how he loved and how he was so proud of his family. I could feel the emotions coming up, and I could feel the struggle that was so familiar coming up. And you know what? I just cried. I just cried there, and I let it out and I invited everybody to cry with me. After a lifetime of damping that down and trying to control it and struggling, it felt so good to let that emotion, let the grief and the sadness come out in those tears. It actually felt good to just feel those emotions. It felt great to invite everybody in that room to feel them with me and cry with me. When I made that invitation, I could feel the shift in the room.
Well, I'm teaching a first-year seminar class right now called How to Build a Big, Fat, Fluffy Brain. We have talked about the power of human emotion. During that lecture, one of my students said, “I love all those positive emotions, but I just want to skip over those negative ones.” I thought, “That sounds familiar.” [chuckles]
But what I've learned is that emotions are essential messages. They tell us things about ourselves. They tell us what we value, what we hold dear in our hearts, that grief and sadness, I realized, was an expression of my deep, deep love for my brother. I can't have that love without the grief, and the sadness and the sorrow that comes when that person is no longer there. I can't have one without the other. I can't have the deep love without the grief. I can't have the relief without the anxiety. I can't have the joy without the fear.
So, I now have a different relationship with my own emotions. Okay, I'm always going to be embarrassed that I cry at fake TV weddings. But today, even in public, I'm not embarrassed about showing my true emotions, because I know that they are one of the most powerful tools that we have to show and to know who we really are as human beings. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg Bowles: [00:48:36] Dr. Wendy Suzuki is an author, professor of neuroscience and Dean of the College of Arts and Science at New York University. She says, “These days, she finds herself crying in public on a somewhat regular basis. It's still terribly uncomfortable, and she struggles with it every time. But she's learning to stay focused on the empowering part of showing your emotions.” You can find out more about Dr. Suzuki and see pictures of her and her family on our website, themoth.org.
In this filtered Instagram world we're living in, everyone is so focused on being perfect and enviable. But I argue that those embarrassing moments are actually gold. We need to be able to laugh at ourselves. No one is perfect. No one. And all you have to do is spend a little time coaxing folks and telling you about their most embarrassing moment and voila, instant connection.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us again next time.
[upbeat music]
Jay Allison: [00:49:51] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison and Meg Bowles, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Viki Merrick, associate producer, Emily Couch. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team include Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Kate Tellers, Marina Klutse, Lee Ann Gullie, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Most stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Chet Atkins, Herbie Hancock, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Guthrie Trapp, and Yusef Lateef. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.
[upbeat music]