Gilda Radner Was Amazing

Neena — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:56:43 +0000

I just wanted to share some thoughts about Gilda Radner. She was best known for her comedy and her role of “Roseanne Roseannadanna” on Saturday Night Live. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986, and kept an incredible state of mind about her illness–she never lost her sense of humor, apparently. She wrote a book called “It’s Always Something” which was published in about 1988. It’s a funny, heartbreaking, and inspirational book that I would recommend to anyone–whether cancer has touched their immediate lives or not. Also, there are now apparently organizations worldwide of “Gilda’s Clubs,” where people living with cancer, and their friends and families, can meet to learn how to live with cancer. The center was named for a quip from Radner, who said, “Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I’d rather not belong to.”

Gilda Radner was also an incredibly deep thinker who offered some profundity in “It’s Always Something.”

I also wanted to share one of my favorite quotations from her writings, about love and life. She wrote:

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

~Gilda Radner

Yep, we never know the fullness of what is going to happen next. The trick is to learn to see the deliciousness in the ambiguity. If Radner could do it staring down advanced ovarian cancer, maybe the rest of us can learn to do it as well.

Enjoy your day, no matter what it brings. There is deliciousness in any manner of things.

Are People Similar, or Different?

Serene — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:17:15 +0000

One of the most profound things that was ever said to me in college came from a Dr. Jim Lyle. He was a theatre and directing professor who was one of the best teachers I ever had. I remember asking him whether he thought that people across the world and from different cultures, religions and such, had more things in common, or more differences.

He thought for a moment, and said:

“I think that all people have a place in them where words fail, and this is what we all have in common.”

He said that to me nearly twenty years ago now, but I will never forget. Any time I start to think that I don’t understand others, or that I have nothing in common with (fill in any “group” I don’t belong to here) … I remember what Dr. Lyle said, and I feel more “at home.”

Wherever Dr. Lyle is now, I thank him for the many contributions that he made to who I am today. The above quote was merely one of them – yet it was one of the most important ones.

How do you think about people that may seem “alien” or completely different to you?

Sharing Circle » People

Gilda Radner Was Amazing

Are People Similar, or Different?

“I think that all people have a place in them where words fail, and this is what we all have in common.”