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Hard Week

2022-03-01 (said on 2022-02-27 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded 2 days later) · letter vlog · John · 3:48 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: heavy topic, calendar ritual

In an unscripted video after a week in which a close high-school friend and Paul Farmer died and the 15th P4A raised almost $3 million, John argues that despair never tells the whole story: mortality makes our love and solidarity more beautiful, injustice is not inevitable, and our job is to make each other feel less alone.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Unscripted, late on Sunday night; the Mountain Goats song You Were Cool as a frame

  • ★ John is making the video with no script or notes; it is not Tuesday but Sunday night at 11:30. — 00:00:00
  • ★ John loves the Mountain Goats song You Were Cool, which opens with a line about the chords the singer always uses. — 00:00:00

00:00:25 — A friend's and Paul Farmer's deaths, then the P4A; the discombobulated cardboard cutout; it sucks when people you love die

  • ★★★ Eight days earlier John learned that one of his close friends from high school had died. — 00:00:25
  • ★★★ The next morning John learned Dr. Paul Farmer had died, and four days later the 15th annual Project for Awesome began. — 00:00:25 · Project for Awesome
  • ★★ This year's (2022) P4A happened amid a global crisis and, for John, personal ones; it has been a difficult week and he hopes not to have many like it. — 00:00:25 · Project for Awesome
  • ★ A discombobulated cardboard cutout of John just off screen, head by his feet, is about how he has felt all weekend. (playful) — 00:00:54
  • ★★ It just sucks when people you love die: you wonder what you should have done differently and how to make sense of a world without them. — 00:00:54

00:01:27 — Despair is not the whole story: mortality makes love more wondrous; we are all capable of monstrosity, but injustice is not inevitable

  • ★★★ John says mere despair never tells the full human story. — 00:01:27 · hope

    “mere despair never tells the full human story”

  • ★★★ John is totally unconvinced by arguments that the inequity, injustice and unfairness of the human condition are inevitable or desirable. — 00:01:27

  • ★★★ Though we, everyone we love and eventually all humans will die, John says that makes our love, solidarity and work for a shared better future more beautiful and wondrous. — 00:01:57
  • ★★★ It is also true that we are monsters to each other, all capable of monstrosity: not only active evil like killing and war but banal bureaucratic evil passing over suffering as inevitable. — 00:01:57
  • ★★★ What breaks John's heart and leads him toward despair is also where he finds hope: there is nothing inevitable about it. — 00:02:26 · hope
  • ★★★ When John was a college freshman, children globally were twice as likely to die before age five as today: a massive human success story. — 00:02:26 · child mortality
  • ★★★ This year's (2022) Project for Awesome raised over three million dollars for charity, by almost any measure the most successful ever. — 00:02:26 · Project for Awesome

00:02:55 — P4A raised almost $3 million; nothing happens alone; our job is to make each other feel less alone; thanks

  • ★★★ John has been overwhelmed with grief because he was reminded nothing happens alone: all his life fellow travelers expressed real solidarity that made him feel less alone. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ During the P4A John was reminded that even when we feel alone we never are, and that our job as humans is to make ourselves and others feel less alone and accompanied. — 00:02:55 · Project for Awesome
  • ★★ John closes by returning to the Mountain Goats song 'You Were Cool' and its line 'we held onto hope that better days were coming, and when we did, we were right'. — 00:03:25
  • ★★ John thanks everyone for an amazing Project for Awesome. — 00:03:25 · Project for Awesome

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says John could have taken this week (week of 28 February 2022) off but made a video because this year's (2022) P4A meant so much to him. — video description · Project for Awesome
  • ★★ The description says John is probably going to take next week (week of 7 March 2022) off. (hedged) — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: grief · Project for Awesome

Also: child mortality · death anxiety · ethical dualism · hope · loneliness · Paul Farmer · The Mountain Goats · You Were Cool

Also centred on grief: Rest In Awesome, Esther · John and Rainn Wilson Talk Romance · Thanks, Lemon · You Are Here · About THAT Scene in Looking for Alaska · Esther Day 2026: Some Thoughts on Loss

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