When are God's punishments actually gifts?
How can you know the sad parts without the happy parts? How can you know the happy parts without the sad parts?
When are God’s punishments actually gifts?
That question comes from a little video of Anderson Cooper interviewing Stephen Colbert about the death of Colbert’s father and two brothers (you’ll find a link at the bottom of this post). They died in a plane crash when Colbert was ten. Cooper interviewed Colbert about it because Cooper was investigating grief after his mother had died, two months earlier.
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I was thinking, that’s so awful for both of them. So much pain. I thought, I feel so lucky that those things haven’t happened to me. Then, I remembered, my mother died four years ago. My eight-month-old baby brother died when I was four. My favorite uncle shot himself in my grandparents’ basement when I was twelve
Watching the Cooper and Colbert video, I kind of shocked myself. I had thought that what had happened to them hadn’t happened to me. I noticed that I tend to imagine—falsely—that tragedies happen to other people and I should have compassion for that but that tragedies haven’t happened to me.
Do you ever imagine that you have no tragedy in your life and suddenly remember that you do?
Gratitude in Punishments
I grew up in the seaside town of Westport, Massachusetts. I went to a new school in seventh grade. I was riding in the little mini-van school bus and the other kids were talking about how boring our town was. One kid piped up, “It’s not that boring. One guy blew his brains out in his basement last month.” That was my uncle.
It’s hard to write about my dead uncle and brother. Not because of the pain of the memory, though, for sure, that’s not comfortable. But more because there is some strange self-consciousness that makes me worry that you will think I’m feeling sorry for myself. Isn’t that a funny thing? That to talk about the hard parts of life somehow feels shameful?
By hard parts, I probably mean what Colbert, in his interview with Cooper, called God’s punishments. I can imagine it felt pretty much like God’s punishment when Colbert was ten and he lost his father and brothers. I guess when I was a kid and my brother and my uncle got taken away, it might have belt a bit like a punishment, too. A punishment by God.
When are God’s punishments actually gifts?
When I was four, and we were in the church, and it was the funeral for my baby brother David, I stood up and shouted, “God, thank you for letting David visit us at least for a little while.” I don’t remember this. But I know it because, on David’s gravestone it says, “Beloved Visitor.” I’m told it says that because of what I said in the church.
I thanked God for the visitor who was David. Thanks for letting him visit us for just a little while, I said.
The Gift of Existing
That little video of the Cooper/Colbert interview was on Instagram. It was a “reel.” Cooper says to Colbert, "You have been quoted as saying, that you are grateful for that which you most wish hadn’t happened.” That which Colbert most wishes hadn’t happened is the death of his father and brothers, of course.
When Cooper reads out loud that Colbert is grateful for that which he most wishes hadn’t happened, Cooper begins to cry a little. Cooper continues and says to Colbert, “Then you went on to say 'What punishments of God are not gifts?’”
Cooper looks almost incredulous. He asks Colbert, “Do you really believe that?"
Colbert looks down and pauses. Then, finally, Colbert looks up and smiles gently at Cooper and simply says, "Yes."
“It’s a gift to exist,” Colbert says. “And with existence comes suffering. There is no escaping that…
“If you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it. You cannot pick and choose what you are grateful for…
“From loss you get awareness of other people’s loss which allows you to connect with other people which allows you to love more deeply.”
What are you grateful for?
Community in Suffering
My favorite uncle—the grown-up who I felt most loved by—shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun. My grandmother—his mother—had been out and when she came home she went down into the basement and found him.
How, on earth, did my grandmother survive finding her son in that condition? I think of that often. It hurts badly to think about it. It hurts to write about it. I don’t want that to have happened. As Colbert says about his father and brothers, “I want it to not have happened.”
But I am grateful to know what it is like to be you. To understand when you feel you have been terribly punished by God. I am grateful that I am connected to you by that suffering. I am not a Christian but this, I think, is the meaning of suffering on the Cross. We suffer together on the Cross and so we understand each other.
I deeply know some of the most painful elements of what it is like to be you. To know what it is like to be you, I have to have experienced all that I have experienced.
To know what it is like to be you I have to have experienced the strange realization that I sometimes think I have had no tragedy in my life when I clearly have. I have to have experienced the strange shame that comes with talking and writing about it.
To know you, I have to experience the desire to share in the truth of it all. The desire to tell it. The desire, having written it, to take it all back. I know what it is like to be you and feel angry about it all.
But then the sunsets. And the cool breezes. And the funny dogs. And the sounds of music. And sex! And love. Zen meditation! Volleyball! My amazing daughter. The best friends I have had. The best friends I have lost. The pressure of tears behind my eyes in this moment.
How can you know the sad parts without the happy parts? How can you know the happy parts without the sad parts?
When are God’s punishments actually gifts? For me, like Colbert, it is when I realize that there is no way to tease the gifts and the punishments apart.
Here is the whole of the Colbert/Cooper interview. Here is a little snippet of it, set to Max Richter’s “The Nature Of Daylight.” If you can take any more about death and dying, here is something about when my mother died, here is something about one of my last conversations with her, and here is her eulogy.
What are your thoughts on all I’ve had to say?
If you are wondering who the hell this wicked intense guy is, who wrote this email, I am a life and executive coach who is able to be with the fullness of who you are.
I work with people who wish to 1. Vastly expand their capability–to grow emotionally, psychologically, spiritually; and 2. Stimulate similar transformations in those around them, in their teams, their communities and their world. You can find out more about me here.
Love,
Colin
PS. Take one of the three spots left in my workshop happening in just ten days!! It’s called Full Contact. This gathering teaches you how to work with your emotions instead of fighting them. You’ll leave with more clarity in hard moments and more skill in your relationships—so your emotions stop derailing what matters most.
Saturday, June 28, 2025 | East Hampton, NY
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I appreciate the reminder of how much my own lived experience helps me in feeling so connected to my clients’ suffering. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like such a gift or resource and yet your reflection is so uniquely articulated, inspires
me to want to write more! thank you for your courageous sharing. it made me so curious to understand more of how your experiences of suffering have informed your spiritual journey. there was a sense of timelessness as there often can be with traumatic experiences- i wasn’t sure how recent your Uncle died. Much gratitude!
So many thoughts about this, but I'll try to be brief! I've had the same realization, I think, in different words several times - that if I want forgiveness for myself, which I define as recognizing that I belong in the universe despite my shortcomings, the only way to have that is for everyone/everything to have it. Not as a matter of having to extend it in order for a deity to give it to me, but just because of the oneness of reality, and that any understanding I wish for myself about how I'm doing my best applies in some way to everyone.
That doesn't mean I won't oppose people who I think are doing harm or that I might think that someone's capabilities to consider others don't align with the amount of power they're amassed. More the sense that people are where they are, and there's no reason to change if they're going to be forever defined by their past.
I also think that the further one gets from a tragedy, the easier it is to be grateful because it was part of forming the person one is now, who wouldn't exist as that particular person without the tragedy. At the same time, it's a lot more morally comfortable to forgive the universe for my own tragedies than those of others. Forgiving my brother's death is one thing; forgiving the fact that millions of people struggle for basic necessities of life feels morally risky because it feels like a slippery slope to callousness and indifference.