Closing Argument: Life Is Pain Management.
CUOMO: I'm not 50 yet. Stop rushing me. Stop wishing me a happy birthday. It's this Sunday. Thank you for reaching out. You people are great. You are why I do this job. So because I am turning 50 this Sunday and I can't really have a party and I don't really know how to celebrate it and I don't really feel like celebrating it, I have lived a lot, though, and I've had an incredibly full and blessed life. I've seen lots of good and lots of bad all over this word, especially in myself. And I want to share some of the lessons. So, lesson number three is that life is pain management, personally, professionally, politically. Now, one of my big shots on the team said to me, so your message tonight is that life sucks and then it ends? No, it is exactly the opposite. That the only mistake you make in life is refusing to deal with the hard parts, because as we all know, my brothers and sisters, pain will come. It is very much part of life -- loss, longing, death, lovelessness, failure, physical pain, professional disappointment, personal doubts and misgivings, psychological angst. It's all gonna come. What's the mistake? That it comes? No, that's reality. The mistake is that we don't deal with it too often, especially men. We make a mistake as seeing toughness as denial. I'm OK, I don't have to deal with it, I'll drink it away. Strength is dealing, not denial. You learn with life to manage what comes your way. You have to, because that's how you cope. By coping, you improve. And by improving, you avoid more of the same type of pain. COVID took me low. In those moments, I had to confront not just fever but flaws, the truth about myself, what I had done, what I had not done. But more importantly, I confronted something you rarely hear men talk about -- pain, fear, hurt, how I had been hurt, how situations had hurt me, how I had hurt others. Men rarely say they are hurt or were hurt by anything other than, like, a tiger. But emotional hurt scars deepest. It drives addiction, bad behaviors. We have to be strong enough to deal with what drives our desperation -- life management. It's true around us, as well. We have a president who says he never had to ask God for forgiveness. He won't admit when he's wrong. He won't admit what has to be done in a pandemic. He won't admit there is systemic racism. Why? It is because he doesn't know how to manage negativity. He doesn't know how to manage pain except through denial. It's a mistake. It's weakness. Here's the truth. You must deal with what disappoints. Problems require owning them and managing them -- feeling, communicating, coping, and thereby changing. Life is pain management, because all of it is coming. And here's the biggest part of the lesson. If you don't learn pain management, you'll never appreciate the good that comes in life, because without the pain, you don't understand the upside of the relief of when beautiful things and blessings come in your life. You squander the good moments, worrying about the bad because you don't know how to manage them, because you're afraid of them. Embrace them. We are all hurt. We are all imperfect. We are all in pain. Manage it and your life will be better. We'll be right back.