Ep 29 | Kevin Hines | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Four seconds.

Four seconds is what it takes for somebody to hit the water after they've jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Four seconds.

That's the amount of time that people have alive.

Nearly 100% of the time that take that leap.

In this case, those four seconds didn't end a life, but changed a life.

Because those four seconds were different.

Somehow, miraculously, on a September day in 2000, 19 years ago, Kevin Hines thought no one cared.

For months, he had suffered from severe mental illness and depression.

Voices in his head had told him, this is the only option, Kevin.

You can't trust anybody.

You have to kill yourself.

Today is the day you die.

On his journey to the bridge, Kevin mentally pleaded with strangers to ask him, are you okay?

To stop him.

But no one did.

Yet through a series of miracles, Kevin survived.

He was rescued.

Recovery was not easy.

He still struggles with his mental disease every day.

But this guy is a fighter.

This is a show today

made for you.

Or perhaps somebody that you know.

Because this is a guy who gave up and then in four seconds said wait i've made a mistake and every day he shares his story in the hopes that his message of hope will help others seek the help they need

I want to tell you about a movie called Unplanned.

I don't know if you've heard, but MPAA has decided to slap an R rating on it.

And it is really,

it's crazy to do this.

This is so far away from an R rating.

The reason why it has an R rating is because there is a CGI scene that lasts maybe 30 seconds tops.

And it is of

a baby, CGI,

on an ultrasound fighting its abortion.

It's crazy.

It's a true story about Abby Johnson and Planned Parenthood.

This, I think, is a game-changing movie.

So much so, I have volunteered my time to be able to tell this story and to get people to come.

So please go to unplannedfilm.com.

That's unplannedfilm.com.

It will change you.

You're traveling 75 miles an hour.

You're dropping 25 stories.

It's said that hitting the water at that speed from the Golden Gate Bridge is like slamming into concrete.

I want to I want to start at what you thought was the ending.

Then I want to go back and look what brought you there and what you've learned since.

The moment my hands

left the rail,

I was on no cord to be talked back.

You know, it was free fall and it was the most terrifying,

petrifying feeling I've ever had until today.

The wind is coming at you so fast with the fog.

It was like,

it felt like needles hitting my skin.

And the impact was so

harsh,

I immediately knew something had exploded inside of me.

And that would have been my T12, L1, and L2 that just popped.

And for a moment before I went into shock, it was excruciating, physically painful.

And that pain was

completely overwhelming.

And then a vacuum, because you're going so fast, just sucks you under

70 feet into the depth of the water.

And you don't know which way is up or down.

But then I opened my eyes, thinking,

I'm alive and I'm drowning.

And my first thought, Glenn, was I don't want to drown.

Why'd you jump into a giant body of water?

You know?

And trying to right myself and find a way to the surface in the murky water was

beyond comprehension.

I didn't know what to do.

But you eventually just naturally bob up?

No, no, I couldn't feel my legs.

Now, I don't know if they were immobile or if I just could not feel them, but I couldn't feel them and I thought I wasn't moving them.

But I swam as fast as my arms would take me to what I believed to be the surface.

After I figured out I was going down initially, because my ears began to ring and my eyes began to bulge.

I knew, I knew I was going down.

I learned that by watching enough Shark Tank, Shark Week.

So I shot to the surface.

And I'm swimming as fast as my arms will take me,

not feeling my legs.

And I get to like this lit circle of water above me, and I think,

I'm not going to make it.

I'm going to die today.

And if I die today, no one is ever going to know that I didn't want to.

Because

when my hands left that rail, it was an instantaneous regret from my actions, which is what 19.

of the 39 Golden Gate Bridge jump survivors have recounted aloud, that they had an instant regret from their actions.

And I believe, Glenn, that that's because our thoughts are separate from our actions.

That's just because we think something doesn't mean we have to do something.

The analogy I use when I go and speak to high school kids is I say, in front of thousands of kids, I say, if your mom and dad's thoughts always became their actions, how many of them would be in jail right now for road rage?

And all the thousands of kids raise their hands.

You know, so if we can recognize in suicidal crisis that our thoughts don't have to define, own, or rule our actions.

I believe we can always stay.

All right.

We're going to come back to how you were rescued.

But now come with me

just to the few minutes before you jumped.

In reading your book and

having personal experience and familial experience with suicide,

I so related

and

people don't understand.

If you've ever contemplated suicide,

you read your book and you're like, that's me.

I know that.

I know that moment.

And others who just look at it as, well, it's some sort of depression.

Hey, buck up, kid.

We all have problems.

That kind of stuff.

They don't understand

how

there is a you

in there still fighting just a little bit still fighting wanting someone to reach out and say stop stop don't do it

tell me about

just tell me about the morning that morning so the morning of uh

you know uh

uh Well, first of all, I hadn't slept,

I think, 14 days, but about two hours.

So that causes psychosis all by itself.

I get to the morning of, I'm feeling like bugs are crawling up and down my skin.

I have bipolar disorder.

It's very real.

I have a neurochemical disease in my brain, misaligning chemicals.

And that morning, I had written the note.

I had put the note in my notebook in the notebook at my shoulder bag by the door.

And at six in the morning, I entered my father, Patrick's room.

He was sound asleep wearing a CPAP machine.

You know, sounding like Darth Vader snoring.

And

I startled him awake, and he says immediately, Kevin, what's wrong?

We've been having a trying time.

Kevin, what's wrong?

And I said, nothing, Dad.

I just wanted to tell you that I love you.

And in my mind, it was for the very last time.

And he said, well, Kevin, I love you too.

But it is six in the morning, and I don't have to be at work until nine, go back to bed.

And he put his mask back on, and he fell as soundly asleep as quickly as he had awoken.

He had no idea.

I walked around the other side of the bed, sat on the carpeted floor, and I rocked my body back and forth in tears, begging myself to tell the one man who loves me the most in the world the truth.

While the voices in my head, the auditory hallucinations caused by that disease,

I call it brain pain, you know.

We call it a mental illness, but it's really brain pain.

Your brain can get diseased just like any other organ in the body.

I just rocked back and forth, begging myself to tell them.

And then the voice in my head said, Kevin,

you have to die today.

You have no choice.

It's inevitable.

And that was a voice I heard for so long.

That inner, that,

and people don't understand what it is.

If you've never had a hallucination, if you've never heard a voice other than your conscience in your head that doesn't sound like anybody you know or love, you can't comprehend unless you put on earphones

like they're doing now to study people with live with schizophrenia and my type of bipolar disorder.

They're studying how and what it's like to listen to voices other than the voices you know

in your head telling you things you should do that you don't want to do so who did you

who

how did you process hearing that voice?

Who was that voice?

What was it?

Oh, I had heard that voice first in fourth grade, but never told anybody.

And in fourth grade,

it wasn't like a voice like yours.

It was like

a hateful, spiteful voice that I couldn't quite understand.

I just knew it didn't like me, you know?

I knew in fourth grade that this thing was in me that didn't like me, that hated me.

How did you process that?

I didn't tell anybody.

I just kept it inside.

What were you thinking that was?

What was that to be a little bit more?

And a fourth fourth grader.

Well, as a fourth grader, first of all, I was viciously bullied in grade school because, and I'm going to be frank with you, Glenn, I didn't look like the other kids.

I wasn't all Irish and I wasn't all Italian.

I'm part black, I'm part Jamaican, I'm part Portuguese.

And

people took note of that and they made fun of me.

The eighth graders would pull my ears like this and yell whistle, little N-word whistle.

Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah.

A few guys would hold me from behind under my arms and punch me in the gut so no one would see the bruises.

I'd love to name them, but I'm not going to.

And this was something that went on every day.

And so there was definitely a great self-loathing that came from without.

It came from outside of me.

That these guys hated me because of the tan color of my skin, or they just hated me because I was different and I maybe acted different.

I was kind of a, I was not a duck, you know, I was loud and obnoxious.

And maybe the word annoying came out a lot but but I was loud and obnoxious partly because of those voices in my head and then and then it would turn into this massive amount of bullying by not just my graders but but every grade above that who didn't like

me and what I looked like and that my family was adopted that my brother was black and that you know my

it was a whole situation that I had to deal with for seven years and in eighth grade I said no more I said I got to get the heck out of here I should have gotten the heck out of this school a long time ago.

And I went to an all-black grade school for eighth grade, and it was the best decision I ever made because they accepted me on day one.

Day one.

And really, Glenn, nobody really knows that part of my story.

I don't talk about that very often.

You know, it's not something that's very public.

Glenn, they put me in a trash can upside down in banana peels when they wanted to.

I want to pursue this,

but why are you sharing it to me now?

I have no idea.

It popped into my head.

I think about it a lot.

They broke me, Glenn.

Every day.

And some of my family members didn't understand what was really going on.

And I say it now.

I think I say it now, Glenn, because I look at cyberbullying, which the crisis text line says is 60% more lethal than physical bullying.

Because these kids see themselves online, they see this persona they've developed online, this social media, and they see that their network, the people on their feeds, to them, Glenn, that's the whole world.

And someone puts a message online or a picture online that makes you, or a video online that makes you look terrible or shames you in some way, or even goes worse than that,

goes further than that

with what these kids are doing these days.

They think the whole world sees that.

And they can't see past the fact that someday they're going to be 37

with four successful businesses and a lovely wife

and a great network of family and friends, they can't see that, Glenn.

They can't see that possibility.

They're stuck in that tunnel.

Everyone knows.

It's out.

I have to die.

And something happens in their brain, Glenn.

Chemicals in their brain change based upon the amount of likes they receive or don't.

And that is a problem we need to solve before it's too late.

I'm going to get a lot of flack for saying this.

I'm on social media all the time.

I just started a YouTube channel, you know,

but I almost,

I find myself wishing for a world

where we look at each other, Glenn, someday and we go,

you remember that thing called social media?

It was so hilarious and so

wonderful in some ways, but so detrimental in so many others?

You remember that thing we used to mess around with that we don't anymore?

I have a part of me, a part of me, that wishes for that world because at least then, Glenn, we'd be sitting at the table having a conversation in person that would matter.

Yeah.

You know, at least then, Glenn, kids would have the conversations they need to have with their parents that they're not having because they're on their phones all night long

and they're not sleeping.

And then they're depressed in the morning and they're wondering why.

So you're in eighth grade, you say stop.

You switch schools.

Yeah.

Does stop, but the voices don't stop.

Well,

so they happened in fourth grade and fifth grade, but then they went away.

It was like I got out of that school.

I got out of that situation.

And I had people who accepted me for who I was,

not who wanted me to be someone I wasn't.

And that was magical, man.

You know?

And then I get into high school, go to all boys Catholic high school where my father went, which I had, I only applied to that school.

It was my only option.

If I didn't get it, I was going to be in big trouble.

And I'm looking

at the wall with my dad's picture on it.

And his picture, his graduation picture is him looking sideways with his Ray-Bans on.

Somehow he snuck that in the picture.

It was fantastic.

It was amazing.

It's on there forever.

And I love that school.

Archbishop Reardon High School as a crusader.

And I have great faith.

I always have.

I only lost my faith, Glenn, the day I was on that bridge, looking down, crying my tears to the waters below.

But I found God on the way down.

But

back to the point at hand.

High school wasn't easy either.

I was 5'2,

a buck and some change.

a tiny guy with no no friends.

And

I remember vividly walking into the cafeteria the first day of school.

And you could literally see the division of race amongst the tables.

It made me so sad.

On the right, and I'm just going to be very clear here.

On the right, it's in the book, I think.

On the right was the

Asian table.

And it was mostly, it looked like, you know, you could tell they were Chinese, Korean individuals, and they made that clear.

The Filipino table was very clear.

The black table,

what I call the misfit table, the white table, and then I don't remember what was on the left.

But I walked up to every table, and every table dismissed me.

Every table said, go sit to the next.

Every single table,

except the misfit table, the table of

tech nerds and geeks and guys that didn't belong anywhere or so they felt.

And I found myself there.

And that was also magical.

It was wonderful.

Because I made some of the greatest friends I still have today who are trying to make films like me.

So it's really cool.

I'm guessing

a lot of those misfit tables end up being the people that are running the world.

I don't know.

I think they're all doing great things.

You know what those misfit tables are filled with people of?

They're filled with the people that are affecting social change.

Yes.

That's what they are.

Yes.

That's what they are.

They change the world.

They want to.

They certainly want to.

And they've always wanted to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

So you

continue to speak about your father, who

sounds wonderful,

but he's not your birth father.

No.

Your father and mother,

you were actually taken from their home very early on.

Yeah.

Tell me that.

Martino Ferales was half Mexican and half Italian

He was a round-faced man from the picture I the one picture I have with the black beard and a big and lots of bushy hair and and he was

a hippie through and through

in the 70s in San Francisco post-hippiera kind of you know and and and he was madly in love with Marcia Veronica Silvera Prasad and she was a whole bunch of wonderful things but she was born in Jamaica, in James Bond Island, in St.

Mary's Island.

And they found themselves in San Francisco, and they found themselves in love, and they had two baby boys.

Me, then named Giovanni Gabriel Prasad Ferales, and my brother, George Ash.

I always wonder why I got four names, he got one.

It's not fair.

Anyway, so

they had two boys.

And I've since learned that they weren't on drugs when they had us, physically, right?

But they were on drugs after they gave birth to us.

So they gave birth to us very quickly, both one after the other.

Jordan Ash was my older brother.

I got that wrong in the book, actually.

A bit of misinformation there.

I misunderstood that.

But

George Ash was my older brother, but only a little bit.

They were busy, mom and dad, you know.

And

we lived in squalor in the town of London in San Francisco.

And

they did a lot of drugs and they sold drugs.

And I'm told my birth mother, I'm told she was a prostitute.

I don't know if that's accurate, but I've been told that many times by different people.

And I found some court documents that when you read a certain quote,

it says

when they came to take us, the police came to take us from our neglectful parents.

The boys lie there, barely clothed.

in their own filth, screaming and crying not to be neglected.

And when you go further, you see that there's drug paraphernalia, sharp metal objects on the bed that, if we had touched, could have harmed or killed us.

So it was a bad situation for two infants to be in.

And they took us and they placed us in foster care and we bounced around from home to home.

And I got emotional when you said about my mom and dad, because I love them dearly and I know they love me, I know they love me unconditionally, they fought to keep me in court, but they couldn't because of their sickness, their disease, their substance use.

You understand this.

I know you do.

they actually kidnapped you they did they they they wanted you some weeks in they wanted us back so bad that they came to the foster care it for a meeting you know a meeting and we were the boys are we were playing and they had a whole plan and they took us and we were on the run for weeks with mom and dad I'm sure there was an APB put out on them and they got us back and they were in big trouble for that

but they really fought for a long time to get us back they wanted and loved us unconditionally I know that I know that.

I didn't know any of this growing up.

At least I didn't remember it.

So I thought my narrative in my head was that they didn't, we weren't taken from them, but that they gave us away.

So this thought in my head about being given away from

the, from the, I hate to say this, but from the jump, I felt worthless.

I've had a void in the pit of my stomach, in my chest, since I can remember, since I can comprehend what pain is, i've had it i say i say and there's a i i say i was born in pain like the character deadpool which i wear on my hat in my watch and i wear it very purposely because that character was born in a great deal of pain and i feel like i was too and

all of my life glenn the greatest achievement i ever would have wanted would be to walk up to marcia to envelop her in my arms, to tell her I love her once, to hear her say it back.

And if she never allowed me to be in her life as her son, I would have been fine with that.

I just wanted that one hug and that one I love you.

I wouldn't get that.

If she would die,

can I get into this if you don't mind?

I mean, I would go to look, I would find out about my birth dad, I think, was killed by police officers because he assaulted them, so they had to do what they had to do.

And I understand that.

You know, he was pushing drugs and all that, and that happened.

But I learned that when I was 12.

It happened when I was young.

And then

I go and look for my birth mom around 25, 27 years of age.

And I learn

from a great friend who looked into the matter, who found my birth parents' information and found that I had

a grandma and grandpa in the Bay Area.

Hope was my grandmother's name, Glenn.

My grandfather's name was Blencorn Silvera.

And Sheikah lived with Hope and Blencorn, and that was my half-sister that I didn't know I had.

And so I get this phone number, and I call it, and this is what I say.

Hi, Sheikah.

My name is Kevin Hines.

I think I'm your brother.

My name used to be Giovanni Gabriel Prasad Ferdales.

Please call me.

Would you call that guy?

Who's going to call that guy?

She didn't call me for two years.

She sees me on 2020 with John Stossel.

She knew the story.

She goes back to that number.

She calls the number.

I'm in my dad's house in Arbalo in San Francisco, the old house.

I get the call in the kitchen.

I'm making a spam sandwich, and that was mine.

Nobody made spam like me.

Not a lot of people even make spam.

But I get this call,

and she says, hello, Kevin.

I said, yes.

She said, did your name used to be Giovanni?

I said, who is this?

Because nobody calls me that.

And she said, this is Sheikah.

I said, like, Sheikah, my sister?

And she said, How many Sheikahs do you know?

I said, I have to see you right now.

She says, Hold on, I don't know you.

I said, No, I have to see you right now.

And if you don't ever want to see me again, I'm okay with that.

I need to see you.

Please, I'm begging you.

I go and I meet her.

And she comes around the corner of a Starbucks on 14th Inu Low in San Francisco on West Portal Avenue.

The spinning image of our ma.

Uncanny resemblance of the one picture I've had my entire life, which I have framed.

It's the only frame picture I have in my man cave.

You know, and

I have a marvel, I have a Marvel man cave.

No, I know, yeah, I can imagine it's all posters.

It's all comics.

I got it.

The one-frame picture is my mom.

And

Sheka walks up to me, opens her arms, envelops me in them, leans in, and says, I love you.

And it was like it all happened.

It happened.

And we're thick as thieves today, you know.

And then I find out I have a half-brother I didn't know I had.

And I meet my cousins who look just like me.

One's heavier, one's skinnier, one's got more muscles, you know.

They're all bald, but not by choice.

So, you know, the point of all this is that, you know, I lost

my parents, my birth parents, but I gained

a beautiful family.

The Heinz family, my mom and dad, Pat and Debbie Hines, took me in, made me their son.

They made my brother their son from a different family and my sister their daughter from a different family.

And we were a melting pot of a beautiful family that nobody understood because we didn't look alike.

And we would walk in our restaurants and people would turn us away in California in the 1980s.

You know?

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

It's crazy.

Crazy.

Only happened a couple of times, but the fact that it happened at all is ridiculous.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, and,

you know,

they gave us

life,

future, hope.

But even though they gave us all of that, the three of us would see the inside of cyclists three times each before we were 30.

Because of our brains.

Mom and dad.

Mom and dad.

They were both.

I mean, usually people who are self-medicating or

are doing it for a reason.

They're doing it for a reason.

They were in pain.

They were hurting.

And their socioeconomic status was poor and they had no feasible legal income.

You're talking about birth parents, right?

Yeah,

they had nothing and no one.

They had themselves and they had us.

And when they didn't have us, they felt like they didn't have anything.

How old were you when you were adopted?

I was adopted

by the Heinz when I was about four and a half.

I think four and a half.

Let's see, it was

March 17th, 1986.

So, yeah.

And Libby Elizabeth was adopted at the same time I was.

And then we took in Joseph.

Oh, what a pumpkin, this kid.

He was special.

He was special.

I can't get into too much about him because he doesn't like to be talked about, but

he's had the hardest life of anyone I've ever known.

Let's leave it at that.

Anyone I've ever known in my entire life.

You're close to your dad, Heinz.

Yeah, no, I am.

My dad and I are thick as thieves.

We're good buddies.

So as you were approaching your time at the bridge,

what were you going through?

I couldn't tell him because the voices just kept interrupting.

You know,

I'll tell my dad and then they be quiet, Kevin.

You have to die, Kevin.

Now, is it one voice, several voices?

I don't know.

Imagine an echo that gets as loud as you can possibly fathom, but inside.

It's not coming from outside, coming from inside.

Imagine, like,

feeling like

there's an entity inside you that hates you and is

always trying to kill you.

I mean, I think you I think you know something about that.

I do.

I don't, I've never heard voices, but I do know, I do know

how unreasonable,

how

absolute lies and and

I would call it anti-logic

becomes

the most logical thing You can...

You believe it.

You see yourself as the problem.

You start to believe that things are better without you.

You just want the pain to stop.

And

you've tried everything you can to get away from it.

What's the one thing all of us want to happen when we are in excruciation physical pain?

We want it to stop.

Right.

And to go away.

And you try anything.

But brain pain is 300,000 times worse than physical pain.

You can heal physical pain over time.

And

your

brain, your mind knows your weaknesses.

Yeah.

You can be in a battle with someone else.

They don't know everything that you do about you.

And your brain plays.

on all of the weaknesses.

It comes at you knowing you.

Yeah.

It's your inner critical voice.

We all have one.

Yeah.

Right.

So that inner critical voice needs to be retaught.

It needs to be relearned, right?

So this is what I do again with high school students and people all over the world is when I'm in front of an audience,

we do an interactive session where I say, okay, I'm going to say my name.

You say your name and repeat after me.

We're going to retrain the negative inner critical voice in our minds, okay?

So every time you say I'm ugly, say I'm beautiful.

Every time you say I'm fat, say I'm gorgeous.

Every time you say I'm dumb, say I'm smart.

And we go back and forth, and you hear somewhere between a thousand and fifteen thousand people recounting this aloud.

And they say they're, I say my name, I say, Kevin, I love you.

And you hear all these names.

And then I love you.

Kevin, you're beautiful.

Kevin, you're the best.

Kevin, you're the greatest.

And then I do one at the end where I

do a silly one.

But it just, it gets them all laughing.

It gets them standing up, moving in their seats, gets them excited.

And then they go home and I get these letters from people that say I retrain my negative inner critical voice and every time I say something I go back to the mirror and I say no I do love you you are amazing and you are the greatest and when that happens when they retrain the inner critical voice over time

guess what recite repeat believe what has every faith ever been built on recite repeat believe if we recite if we repeat if we believe we can change it on that note Glenn I want to bring something up to you that I think you're that would be close to your heart our U.S.

military is dying 22 a day by suicide or more.

Actually, it is more because a lot of underreported.

It's so underreported because of the ones that are accidentally reported and all the other,

it's disgusting.

There are two things I think can change this

in a very quick amount of time.

And I mean this.

I have been racking my brain as I travel the world to military bases giving presentations 16 to 18 weeks a year.

I've been racking my brain brain working for the DOD and on on their on one of their boards and trying to solve the military crisis of suicide.

And I believe I've come up with two strategies that could make a real difference.

Number one is that

I believe the cadence is wrong.

The cadence that every military officer

gives out when when this when the military drill sergeant puts it out and they repeat it is not about how they survive themselves.

It's about how they survive war.

It's about how they fight to kill, fight to take over

and fight to win.

And that's great, and that's important.

That should be part of it.

Another part of it should be about fighting to survive themselves, especially with the number that are dying every day.

It should be, I will, never die by my hands.

I will fight the pain in spite of the pain to survive every day.

Something along those lines, something that we can write, that a drill sergeant can bellow,

that a military officer can repeat every single day.

And if we recite, we repeat, we believe.

Look at every faith in the world.

So,

what you're talking about is something called science of mind

that I was raised on.

And it's a philosophy from California, I think, around the 1940s, in the age of Norman Vincent Peale, you know,

positive thinking and and all this stuff.

And

it's rooted in

the ideas of

the power of the spoken word,

the power of creation.

You know, as God spoke, it became.

In the beginning, there was the word, and the word

created.

And so we have that creative power inside of us, and it is by the word.

Our words, our thoughts are all creative so when you say I will never

the the the mind doesn't recognize a negative thought it is not a judge of positive negative it just is so when people say if I asked you jumping off the bridge

was that the worst day of your life the best day of your life or both both right

the brain most people would say listen to your story and pick one of the two.

Okay.

You know what I mean?

And they would say, oh, you struggled so hard and that was the worst.

But when you really have perspective, you can back up and go, this was horrible in my life.

But I had the power to take that and build this out of it.

You know?

So the brain doesn't judge good or bad.

It just is.

So whatever you're telling yourself, you say, I am fat, I am ugly.

you are going to create fat and ugly and you believe it you believe it know it and people fail when they say

well i don't believe that i'm i'm happy i'm successful right and you won't for a long time but you have to start replacing this negative tape it's i firmly believe

that

the the commandment of thou shalt not take thy Lord thy God's name in vain.

I firmly believe this, and I haven't heard any church ever say this.

So, this is the gospel, according to Glenn.

Thou shalt not take the Lord thy God's name in vain.

What is it?

It's Yahweh.

It's this, it's that.

Well, no.

In fact, it's so sacred that you're not supposed to say it.

The Jewish people will not utter it.

And Yahweh is not it.

It is, if you were to pronounce it, it is more like,

so it's the breath.

First, there was the word, and it was spoken.

And so it's a breath that comes out that creates.

When he says, don't take my name in vain.

If you read the Bible, it is always capitalized, I am.

His name at Moses, who shall I say, sent me?

I am that I am.

I am

happy.

I'm coupling with the God force to create that.

I am miserable.

Be careful.

Don't take I am in vain.

Don't just let it spill out of your head

because it builds you.

It creates you.

And it can destroy you.

And it can destroy you.

It's what saved my life.

It's what saved my life.

I was going down the same exact path.

And my father said,

what are you saying?

What do you feel I am?

What's the word after that that you hear all the time?

That you're saying all the time.

And you don't even notice it.

And he said to me, I want you to...

I want you to go and keep a notepad at your table or at your bedside for the morning.

Do it one day.

Put a notepad and a pen.

Keep it there.

You wake up after midnight, or whenever you wake up, journal your thoughts.

Don't write down what it is.

Just put a slash down the center, positive, negative.

Okay.

I woke up at about 4.45, had to be at work at about 5.15.

I hit my first stoplight on the way.

I had 37 negatives and not a single positive.

Wow.

That was my diagnosis.

I knew exactly what was happening.

I had taken the things that I had felt, that others had said,

the experiences of my life, and I just consumed them.

And I made that me.

It's not who I was.

No.

You are on absolutely the right track.

Well, one of the other things that boggles my mind is that every military base in the world has about four or five things in common.

A Taco Bell, a Starbucks, a McDonald's, a Subway,

and maybe one other, you know,

pizza.

There it is, right.

Five

shops filled with inflammatory foods that cause depression.

Filled with inflammatory...

Nothing but inflammatory foods that cause depression.

And we're wondering why they're dying at 70 a day.

If we actually did the work to remove those foods and and put in the food and and there there are there are some military bases now that are implementing really good healthy foods um uh i'm forgetting the doctor's the um the chef's name but chef irwin now chef irwin is implementing great tasty delicious and healthy non-inflammatory foods in some military bases but they but we need to find a way to do it into all if we are going to change their brains so they can change their minds about about feeling so depressed so they can stop some of the suicides i believe those two things changing the cadence in some way and helping replace that negative inner critical thinking with positive positive force thinking and also replacing inflammation reducing inflammation in the brain that is causing depression look when

inflammation is

cancer pain yes brain pain yes all of it

let me let me tell you what

you know about this story you know about my life but in the last hundred weeks i have been through the worst worst hell in my life, worse than the Golden Gate Bridge, worse than what happened to me as a baby,

arguably.

In the last 100 weeks,

I came down with secondary burns across my entire body from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head.

My medications I'd been taking for 20 years poisoned my insides.

And I was, I was, you could see through me, but you could also see blood and blisters just coming out.

It was awful, Glenn.

And it felt like needles and knives were coming out of my skin 24 hours a day for 30 of those 100 weeks, 24-7.

And I wanted to die, Glenn.

I wanted to buckle.

I wanted to fold.

I wanted to take my life.

But I fought it every day.

I fought it.

Every day.

My wife saved me every single day.

Margaret, I love you.

God, I love that woman.

And

two things happened.

They reduced the meds,

which I have to take a part of these meds because my brain is broken.

And I take them with accuracy every day.

But they reduced them to zero in 24 hours.

Oh, my.

Which I've been taking them for 20 years.

So

I had a 24-hour hallucinatory withdrawal-based psychosis from the meds.

Oh, my gosh.

I saw the answers to the universe.

Gandhi came in front of me.

So did the king of Bhutan.

So did all of the Jesuses and every ethnicity.

It went on for 24 hours.

I'm sorry,

48 hours of this,

48 hours of this 73-hour psychosis was just the aurora borealis in my room, blackness, and just lights.

More beautiful than the one I saw in Alaska a couple years ago.

And then my wife took care of me and got me to a safe place.

And then I healed the burns with a very particular

natural ointment.

But also, I healed the burns because I ran into

what I call a new friend, Max Lugavir, who wrote the book, Genius Foods, about inflammation in the gut.

And the gut, the foods I was eating, was causing inflammation in my brain that was causing my skin to burn.

And it was in mixed with the medication.

They said I was on the tipping point of Stevens-Johnson's.

1% of people who get Stevens-Johnson survive.

I was already 1% of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I wasn't going to do it twice.

I fought through the pain.

Stevens-Johnson's is when your skin boils out of you.

Everything on the inside comes out.

There's nothing you can do.

You die in agonizing pain.

There's no pain med that can stop the pain.

Everything on the inside comes out.

I was on the tipping point, which is why they had to remove the meds in 24 hours.

Now, I'm not suggesting people with medications don't take them.

This was a very particular medication.

They had to find out which one of the five meds was causing this.

I take it because,

and we found that, we rided the ship.

The doctors got involved, and I'm lucky that I had that ability.

So many do not.

And that's another massive problem, which we are not going to solve in this conversation.

Nobody is, you know.

But it was terrifying, and it was the most physical pain I've ever experienced in my life.

And everyone kept asking me how I can keep going.

And I just said, because I have to.

I've gotten this far.

If the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't going to kill me, this certainly isn't.

And it was a nightmare nightmare for my family and my friends.

But here we are, and I get to sit next to you.

Tell me what happened.

We left the story with you under the water,

swimming up towards the light.

And you said, oh, I'm not going to make it.

Tell me what happened.

Oh, you have to.

This is the most beautiful part of it all.

I'm bobbing up and down in the water.

I cannot stay afloat.

As you are falling, you actually look up.

Yeah, no, I threw my head back.

And you said to God.

I said, God, please save me.

I don't want to die.

So in the four seconds that I was falling, God, please save me.

I don't want to die.

I made a mistake.

No,

I said that in the water.

Pardon me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so

you hit.

Yeah, no, I know exactly what I said.

So as I'm falling, I said, what have I just done?

I don't want to die.

God, please save me.

Hit the water.

Then you're coming back.

Then I come up.

I'm bobbing up and down in the water, and I cannot stay afloat.

How cold is the water?

What's the temperature?

Oh,

hypothermic water.

Hey, Steve.

I don't know.

I know that if you're in that water past 15 minutes, you're going to die.

My mother committed suicide in the water.

And

it was about eight minutes before you.

Oh, eight minutes, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it wasn't the same water.

She was a little farther up north.

Okay, so this was in under the Golden Gate Bridge, if you're in there 15 minutes or more, you're not going to lie.

So at that time of the year, it was September 2000.

And you know.

You can't move your legs.

You can't feel your legs.

You can't feel my legs.

And so I'm bobbing down.

I'm swallowing salt water.

I'm spitting it out.

I'm coming up, going down, spinning it out.

But then I go down and I can't continue to come back up.

I'm getting really tired of having a violent asthma attack.

I've had exercise-induced asthma since kindergarten.

So I can't, I keep going down further, and something happens.

Something begins to circle beneath me, something large and very slimy and very, very alive.

I remember thinking to myself,

you gotta be kidding me.

I didn't die off the Golden Gate Bridge and a shark is going to eat me.

Are you sure?

I took my right arm, which was wrenched, like moving it past here was really painful.

And I'm just going like this, like, no, don't eat me.

Don't eat me, please.

Don't bite me.

But it's not, you know, a shark's hide is tough and like sandpaper.

So I didn't know that what I was hitting was very slippery, so it clearly wasn't a shark, but I had no idea.

So I'm freaking out and I'm punching this thing, but it won't go away.

And it just circles faster and faster, faster and faster.

And no longer am I waiting in the water to stay afloat.

I'm lying on top of my back being kept afloat by this creature.

Thinking to myself, this is one hell of a nice shark.

And right then and there, I named him Herbert.

And Herbert is right here.

This is Herbert.

And he was a sea lion.

He was a sea lion.

And I know he was a sea lion because

a man named Morgan McWard who had seen me on TV, had written into ABC and he wrote and he said, Kevin, I'm so very glad you're alive.

I was standing less than two feet away from you when you jumped.

It's haunted me until this day because no one would tell me whether you lived or died.

By the way, Kevin, there was no shark like you mentioned on the show, but there was a sea lion.

And the people above looking down believed it'd be keeping your body afloat until the Coast Guard boat arrived behind you.

I call that a miracle.

It's not the only miracle.

Nope,

there's about three things that came into play that absolutely were game changers.

A woman driving by in a red car, at the moment I jumped, she saw me go over the rail and she called her friend in the Coast Guard.

The reason the Coast Guard arrived to me before I would set in hypothermia and drown.

Next to that,

in the hospital, as I was entering the emergency ward, one of the foremost back surgeons on the West Coast was leaving.

He opts to stay, does a surgery on me.

It's one of the first of its particular kind.

I think it's the only of its particular kind.

And I have a 23-staple scar across my left side.

And I always say I know how many staples because I asked to pull them out myself as part of my healing.

Oh.

I just, it was a thing I needed to do.

They started pulling them out.

And I was like, no, no, no.

I got this.

And, oh, God, that's not a good feeling.

But anyway, so

I did that.

And

so many things came into play.

And frankly, there's another piece to this that I thought of recently that someone said to me, there was a woman.

Before I jumped, there was a woman who approached me with these big sunglasses like you see on these fashionable ladies.

A Russian accent?

The way it's written, it kind of sounds like it's a very good thing.

it sounds like Viliu take my picture.

I'm not going to define what that was, but it was Viliu take my picture.

And so she approaches, blonde, beautiful lady in these sunglasses, and I think.

And first think that she's there to help you because we have to paint the scene a bit.

Yeah, of course.

You get off the bus, you leave your house after rocking back and forth with your dad.

You on the floor, right?

You get onto the bus.

You're going to

the bridge to die.

You know what you're going to do.

And you're hoping that somebody will stop you oh on that bus I was crying like a baby I had yelled on the bus leave me alone I don't want to die God please say why did you

you're saying it out loud I was saying it out loud out loud

I don't want to die I'm a good person why do you hate me so much what did I ever do to you

out loud The only person to react aloud was this guy who goes like this.

This person's not in the book.

He goes, what the hell is wrong with that kid?

To the guy guy next to him

i think the problem we have in this society glenn is that we live in a society where uh we we have apathy for those who are in pain that's his or her problem but it ain't mine i got stuff to do i'm a busy person i got to be somewhere when we see someone on the street who's visibly in pain we walk by them i know that because i've seen it a thousand times My wife and I don't walk by those people.

We walk up to them and say, hey, pardon me, but you don't look too well.

You look like you're really going through something.

And they look at you, man.

The reactions you get, like, why do you care?

Because I'm human and I do.

And you look like you're really hurting.

And if you need to talk, I'm going to sit here with you.

You wouldn't be surprised at how many people take a seat

and just let it out.

I was on a book tour, and I had gotten my first real bad death threat.

And it was from a group, and I had to do a

multiple city, 26 cities, meeting probably about 3,000 people a day.

And

scared out of my mind.

Scared out of my mind.

First time I wore a bulletproof vest and all of these things.

And I was on the road for a month, and it almost broke me.

And

a friend of of mine, a spiritual leader, gave me a blessing and gave me a blessing of

discernment.

It's the greatest thing I've ever been given.

And it happens when I'm out in crowds.

I can see it.

I could spend two seconds with someone and look them in the eye, but you have to look them in the eye.

And you have to be really willing to see what is there,

and you can see it.

And I have so many times stopped a line or something and just said, Excuse me, because somebody had walked off, no communication,

just, hi, how are you?

What's your name?

Signing the book.

They turn around and walk away.

And I'm overwhelmed with, they're in trouble.

Yeah.

And I've stopped the line several times.

This last book tour I went out, I met three people who came up in line and said, you saved my life.

How?

I don't even remember.

What happened?

They said, you stopped a book line and you came up and hugged me and said, I don't know what's going on in your life, but it's okay.

Usually people will cry

and it's bizarre.

But they're looking for someone.

Anyone.

And what's remarkable about your story, I think,

is finish the story about the lady.

Will you take my picture?

Yeah.

So this is where it's part of the miracle too, because had she not stopped me to take her picture five times, she had to do her whole thing.

For those five minutes, that sea lion, Herbert, wouldn't have been in the place it was.

arguably to save my life.

So I look at it, I look at, go ahead.

I used to look at it like, why didn't you see my pain?

Why didn't you stop?

Why didn't you say something nice to me?

Why didn't you help me?

But then

someone said to me, Kevin, you missed it.

She was trying to interact with you.

It was probably a language barrier.

She was trying to make a connection.

You missed it.

And I've changed the narrative on that one a little bit, I think.

I don't know which is accurate, or maybe it's both.

I will tell you, because I look at your story, can I tell the

story Please, yeah.

God knows you.

God knows not just your pain, but he knows who you are now,

who you were, and who you're going to be.

And he is the greatest.

He's the greatest at making lemonade out of lemons.

You can do anything.

And he'd be like, yes, but

look what you just made.

You know what I mean?

You have to embrace it, yeah but you can he can take anything the worst that you can do and make it great so you are saying God why do you hate me why why is no one stopping and you look at that part when they're on the bridge and you and I because we're humans we're like please Lord somebody stop me

He was there with the woman in the car, with the doctor that was getting onto an airplane, with the seal.

He knew, he knew that there would be people that would be there

when you needed it.

But jumping off the bridge, I'm not saying you should ever, anyone should ever jump off the bridge, but

when you have made such a colossal error,

if you survive your stupidity and you allow him,

he's already got it all in play.

He has it all in play

does that make sense to you of course it does I have faith yeah I've had it I've had it my whole life

you know and I think to address those who do not it we're not putting you down or pressing on you just let you know that you that that it's got your back too yeah you know it's all of our backs all of our backs all of our backs yeah yeah

And you are loved, and you are beautiful, and you are perfect just as you are, and you are all 1,000 times greater than the worst thing you've ever done.

So, when you were on the bus, and that guy said,

you know, what's wrong with that kid?

Yeah.

Have you gotten to a place to where you can see

his pain?

Because he's lying

for some reason.

He was hurting.

Think about that.

Like,

why see a kid crying like a baby?

Say, what the hell's wrong with that kid if you're not

if you're not broken too?

Yeah.

You know, I get that.

I totally get that.

And I have no ill will toward that.

You know, not, you know, you know, he, uh, I understand that reaction.

I've seen it a million times.

The the book is cracked, not broken.

Yeah.

And you talk about

hearing voices that I don't think people can really relate to.

Most people.

And

in the theaters,

just recently was a movie called Broken.

And it is, did you see that movie?

No, I haven't seen it.

It's about

a guy who hears voices and others.

And

he calls it the I think the herd.

Is it the herd?

Does anybody remember?

He calls the people.

He doesn't usually come to the surface, the guy.

But he has had horrible things happen to him in his life, and so he's got all these layers of protection around him.

And they all kind of

work

to protect him, and he's afraid, and the herd is afraid of one

and described very similar to the voice that you had that is just

dark

he hates me

it's a it's a it's a pure hate

it's it's a

you know it's interesting uh Glenn the other

after my skin healed

Because I've been hearing that

and I'll be frank with you, I've been hearing for

the better part of 20 years from this voice, Kevin,

I'm going to kill you.

It's inevitable.

It's just a matter of time.

I'm going to end you.

And there is nothing you can do about it.

And I've been fighting that for a long time.

And I believe I'll always win because I have, because of my faith, but because of of my family, but because of my friends, because of my support network, because of how hard I work for my brain health every day.

Is that a reason why you took the staples out yourself?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can do this.

I got this.

I got this on lockdown.

I'm not going to be my end.

These hands will not end me.

I'll die naturally holding my wife's hand in a hospital setting like in the film The Notebook I never watched Trice or Cried During.

That's

at 112, naturally.

Natural causes is how I will go.

But that voice, for the first time ever,

I was having an emotional breakdown at a hotel and

I had such physical pain from, because it was on and off, physical pain, even though the burns were healed, it was on and off.

Such physical pain that I worked out for like six hours straight.

I exercised for six hours straight, which is ridiculous, but it's the only thing that made me think of something else besides the pain.

And after that ridiculous workout, I came out and I was exhausted and I sat for breakfast because it was breakfast time already.

And I looked over

and Glenn I could see me.

And he looked at me for the first time in almost 20 years.

And he goes,

hey man,

I'm sorry.

I'm never going to kill you.

You've been through too much already.

I'm done effing with you.

It's over.

I'm not going to end you.

And he went away.

And I just left sat there.

Just like

feeling freer than I'd ever felt in my entire life.

Feeling like just

it was all

off of me.

And

he hasn't.

That was, I don't know,

only

I guess a couple of two, three months ago.

And he hasn't,

that voice hasn't come back to say,

what do you say?

That means a lot to me.

I bet it does.

It's been a long time fighting that voice.

So when I say it gets better, Glenn.

But only with hard work.

Because my dad taught me nothing good ever came without it.

I know you you know about that.

Let's talk to two people.

Okay.

First,

talk to directly to somebody who

might be

struggling right now.

Just talk right to them one-on-one what

they need to hear.

Is there a camera I can look into to see them?

Look into that one.

Move your hat up so they can see your eyes.

Here, here.

You are beautiful.

If nobody else says it today,

we love you.

Hope is real.

It may not be an action plan, but it is real.

It exists.

There is light at the end of every tunnel, and suicide can never be the answer to your problems.

It is the problem.

And I believe that if you fight the pain, you will defeat it.

I believe in you.

And I think that if you are in that place right now

where you are desperately considering suicide, I want you to just take a breath.

Just take a moment.

And take a breath.

Take 30 more.

There's a technique called 4-8.

Inhale 4 seconds through your nose.

Exhale 8 seconds through pursed lips like a whistle, but no sound.

You do that 30 times.

You're going to bring your panic to a calm, an adrenaline rush

to a quell, and you're going to be able to bring yourself to a norm, an even keel.

If you take your life, look, we're all going to die.

That is inevitable.

None of us are going to be immortal.

We're all going to die.

Give yourself an opportunity for things to change in this life naturally.

If you take your life now, you will never know the beauty that you will become.

I would never have met the love of my life and my very best friend, Margaret Hines.

I would never have had the dog named Max who looked just like my dad.

They were twins.

He was a Sharpe, all the wrinkles.

I would never have become the godfather to two beautiful Godchildren.

And to be fair, I'm only the godfather to one of them, but by proxy, I'm making myself the godfather of the other one

I would never have enriched their lives with love and beauty and made their lives better

I would never have been given the gift of a second chance

please I beg of you I beg of you don't learn the hard way like I did

suicide isn't worth it but life is

and you deserve this life until your natural end.

I want you to think about something.

Think about all the children who never make it past the womb.

30% of every first pregnancy ends in miscarriage.

Margaret and I know that pain.

Jack Ryan will never be in my arms, our arms.

He wasn't meant to be here in physical form.

But you all are.

For the simple fact that you are looking into my brown eyes, I know you're supposed to be here.

Be here tomorrow, and every gosh darn day after that,

no matter the pain, in spite of the pain, you can survive.

And I love you.

I wish

every time I tell the story to somebody of the day I decided to live

instead of die,

I wish I could say,

and I got up the next morning and it was better.

But it wasn't.

No.

It's hard for a long time.

It's hard for a long time.

One more.

People don't understand

unless they've lived it.

You know,

an overdose.

How could we have helped that alcoholic or how could we have helped that drug addict?

Well, were you there?

Did you ask, do you need help?

Do you want to stop?

If you've done that and they say no,

they have to find their bottom.

Don't enable them, don't help them, just be there when they say,

I need help, I need out.

With depression, I know so many people who have depression and their parents or their spouse will say, oh, they're just always, I mean, they just get down and I don't understand.

I tell them, just get over it.

It's not that.

No, it's not that simple.

So speak to that person who doesn't understand.

Yeah,

to the folks that look at you and they go, snap out of it, get over it, move on, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

It's all in your head.

Yeah, it's in my head.

Literally my brain, the single most powerful organ you wield, controlling every action and inaction you take, every decision and indecision connected to every other part of the body.

And if your brain is in malfunction with the rest of your system, there goes the rest of it.

So to the people that look at the individual in brain pain and say, snap out of it, no, you snap out of it.

And recognize that your loved one is going through something very real that is detrimental.

And they don't just need

a voice that says, hey, come on, it's been, you know, it's been three weeks since you've been depressed.

Let's go.

Let's get out of that right now.

They need a hug.

They need you to hold them for 23 seconds seconds a day, which releases oxytocin in the brain, which makes people feel better.

They need you to do more.

They need you to be better, do better.

They need you to research mental, brain, mind, behavioral, spiritual health.

And they need you to understand depression so you can help them defeat depression.

Do you believe that there is a

mind-spirit connection?

That there is a

there are physical

things that

medicine can only address.

And then there is also a component, and they don't always come together, but usually they will come together, of the spiritual wounds that you had as a child.

So that those spiritual wounds,

the making fun of, the telling yourself something all the time, That's not necessarily a chemical thing,

but you have created it or it has been created for you and it works hand in hand.

Do you believe in those

pieces of it?

I believe they can intersect and they can affect one another, absolutely.

Because I'm a very spiritual person.

I'm also a very religious person.

So I believe that, you know,

I have my faith.

I have my family.

I have my friends.

Those are my three F's.

Those are what keep me out of trouble.

right?

My three F's, faith, family, and friends.

But the spiritual side of things allows me to

tap into something that is stronger than myself that can help me defeat the pain.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's how I see it.

All right.

So you weren't sent a Navy SEAL, you were sent

a seal seal or a seal,

yeah.

These little guys,

bigger than you think.

But why?

Why?

Oh,

To give me

a chance to survive physically so that I could try, just try to affect the lives of as many human beings as possible for the rest of my natural life.

I did an interview three years ago with a guy who was on a bridge in London.

I think it was the London bridge, and he was going to kill himself and throw himself off.

He was lucky enough to have a stranger just walk up.

All these people, he was crying just like you.

All these people walked by him.

And one person didn't and said,

hey, bud,

what's happening?

I met him.

I flew them both in from London.

I met that one.

And I said, what made you do it?

And he said, I don't know.

He said, I'm not that guy.

He said, I just knew he was in trouble.

And so he saved him.

The guy who was saved

went and

had the same kind of issues that you have, heard voices since he was little.

And no one said, but he said that the guy on the bridge said,

it can get better.

Was it Neil and Daniel?

Neil Layborne and Daniel.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

There was a movie called Find Mike.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, they're good friends of my wife and i i love them yes so we brought them we brought them here and

he

he i don't think he had put in

to place yet he knew he was supposed to talk to other people and he was supposed to help

but we flew another person in and it was somebody whose life he had saved from hearing him speak about his issue.

Just to talk about it.

Just to that he was going to kill himself.

He saw him online.

And that online talking about the other guy, what he said.

Yes.

That's the key.

We can all do this.

Yes.

That's the point.

Right.

That's the point.

It's crazy that we all, we get inside of ourselves.

Yeah.

We're having something happen to us.

You didn't say anything for the longest time.

You're afraid.

It's just me.

you're afraid to approach somebody on the bridge you you're on the bus and you kind of joke it off or play macho because you're uncomfortable with what's happening nobody is willing to break out of that bubble and the ones who break out are they going to be the ones who break who change the world

or at the very least change one life yes for the rest of their life change the world yeah well yeah yes yes well think about it like this right so you a suicide doesn't doesn't just stop at that generation

It affects every

so if I'm an uncle,

which I am, if I'm an uncle and I die by my hands and my nephews

grieve me and then they become different people.

They take different paths.

They take different careers because of what I did.

And then their kids take different paths because initially of what I did.

And this just goes on forever.

And it also,

I've had two suicides in my family.

Okay.

And so it, it also, with me, with my mother, well, that's just, I guess that's who we are.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess that's who we are.

I guess that's what you do.

I guess I'm destined for this.

And so it plays.

It just plays into that and it changes your tape.

Yep.

It then becomes that option.

Mom did it.

Right.

Grandpa did it.

You know, it becomes an option.

And so we have to,

I'm a firm believer that we have to teach our kids from fourth grade what mental, mind, brain, and behavioral health are when they can comprehend the words.

Just so they know that by the time they hit 16 and there's a potentiality for it to be diagnosed, that they know what to do, who to talk to, and that we got their back, that

that

personal support network is there and that you're not going to be alone in this fight and that we are going to support you empathetically with an entire lack of judgment.

I am one of the worst people I've riddled with ADD, and I'm one of the worst people to sit.

My wife is the exact opposite of me, thank God.

She is quiet, and gentle, and peaceful, and solid.

And so, when we are having an argument,

it is

well,

let me think.

God, it drives me out of my mind because it takes forever.

It takes forever.

But it is

so important

in this particular

problem

that

you do just

sit and shut up

because the person who is struggling is what you

wanted to tell your dad

If he would have

said, I love you too, bud.

Here, sit down.

Lay down in bed with me.

Would you have had the same day?

I can't answer that question.

I have no idea.

You know,

I look at it like it's no fault of his own.

I'm not saying that.

No, I know you weren't.

I know you weren't.

I know that, Glenn, but I look at that and I think, you know,

had he said,

had he said, what are you thinking right now?

I think it would have been a different day.

What was the first thing he said as he had his secretary drive

his car?

Yeah, he couldn't, he couldn't.

Yeah, so

he got the phone call

from the hospital

and

The

they were so callous.

They were just like Mr.

Hines.

Yes, your son has jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

He took a breath, sat down, and he goes, Is my son alive?

Thinking as a fourth-generation San Francisco that he knew the answer that I was gone.

And she says, Yes.

And his immediate reaction as a pessimist was, no, he's not.

You're just saying that to get me to I do the body at the morgue safely.

And he calls his secretary, Rachel, and says,

Rachel, my son has just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

I need you to ride in the passenger seat of the car, because if you don't, I will drive off of a cliff.

And he didn't mean die by suicide.

He just meant that if he didn't have someone sitting there to protect, he wouldn't be able to see straight to get to the hospital.

And he was the first person there,

because he speeds.

And he gets there, and he walks in to my room.

I'll never forget, I looked up at my dad, and he looks down at me, and this is a man who in 19 years I had never seen a tear run down his eyes.

Not one.

In pain and death in the family, nothing.

And he looks down at me and waterfalls just flow from his eyes.

And he comes over and he puts his hand on my forehead and he says, Kevin, you are going to be okay.

I promise.

And I never held words closer to my chest ever before.

I just I just held them.

Like, okay, dad says I'm going to be okay.

I got this.

I can do this.

Just the getting out of the bracing structure, you know, the surgery,

the being in the hospital, the going to the side court afterwards, the walking with the back brace and the cane for however long.

You know,

I got this.

I can do this.

I can survive this pain.

And,

you know, Glenn, I think I learned another thing

after all this, after the miracles and

the getting to be here and the fighting all of the different kinds of pain in my life and continuing until today, just like you do, I think I learned, at least this is how I feel.

I'm not trying to push this on anybody, but

I believe after my skin disease issues that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

We choose to suffer or we choose to thrive.

Damn it, I'm going to thrive every day.

I'm going to fight for what's right, for good causes.

I'm going to be good, kind, and compassionate, loving, and caring, empathetic, and non-judgmental to every person I come into contact with that I possibly can.

I'm going to get irritated with some people.

You can't get around that, you know, especially in airports.

No, but you got to try to give back to every person you can,

every time you can, because you never know what they're going through.

And behaviors are learned.

Nobody is born hating somebody else.

They're taught to to hate.

I choose to love everybody every time and to have empathy for all, not just some.

Because I think that it's too easy for us to be angry at different kinds of people.

I think we need to be kind to everybody,

no matter what their views are, their socioeconomic background, their political affiliations are none.

Their religious affiliation are none.

I think we have to be kind to people at a base level

because we don't truly know where they came from and who taught them what they taught them.

So let's just wrap each other around in some love and recognize that maybe hope isn't the answer, but it's a darn good start.

I don't think I've ever ended a podcast with this,

but I love you, Kevin.

I love you too, Clev.

So great.

I love you too.

God bless you.

You too, buddy.

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