RUSH: On Fox & Friends today Ainsley Earhardt said, “We’re so honored to have you on here. For the folks that are watching that — and most people are grateful every day.
“I know what you’re going through makes it even more powerful in your mind. But for those folks that are watching that are grateful, that love God, that love country, that worry about the future, love our children: With your diagnosis, how do you balance it all? What’s your advice to all of us?”
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RUSH: The way I look at it is life is the most precious thing we have, and it’s probably the thing that most people just take for granted. We’re busy. We don’t even take time to consciously think of our lives because we’re too busy living them. But I really appreciate mine now, I have to tell you — and I always have. But we all only get one.
And we all have the opportunity starting out to make the most of it or whatever we want it to be. And we get a do-over every day. If we screw up one day, we get a chance to fix it the next day. And we’re Americans, which means we have the freedom to invest in whatever it is that makes us happy. That’s in our founding documents.
In my case, I’m grateful that I have been able to make it to Election Day. I’m grateful that I am still able to do my radio show. I’m grateful that I am still able to have meaningful conversations, relationships with my family. I’m grateful for everything that happened. There’s so much to be thankful for, especially when right in front of you is the prospect of it being taken away.
And it just amps up the appreciation for all of the goodness that you have in your life and for all the… You know, we all have rotten things happen to us, and we all have unfortunate things. But I tell you: One thing I’ve learned is that there’s good in everything that happens. It may not present itself for weeks, months, whatever, but there’s good in everything that happens if you look for it, and I firmly believe that —
EARHARDT: Even an election that doesn’t go in your favor?
RUSH: Yeah, and I actually believe… You mentioned God. God is a profound factor. Jesus Christ is a profound factor. I have a personal relationship. I’ve not talked about it much publicly because I don’t proselytize these things. But, yeah. I just try to give thanks every day for all of the blessings. I have had a blessed life. I have had so many great friends — and still do — that it’s been nothing negative for me.
There’s nothing — nothing — that I have deep regrets about because I’ve been too blessed.
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RUSH: Yeah, and it’s all rooted in the fact that… By the way, my appreciation for and realization of life predates my diagnosis, and I’ll tell you when it hit me. It happened to me one day, the realization. It was a news report. It was somebody that I didn’t even know. Doesn’t matter who. The words that were used were, “Such-and-such lost his life today in a backyard shooting” or whatever.
I said, “Wait a minute. ‘Lost his life.’ Life is something to lose.” Yeah, I’d heard the phrase before, and I had processed it, and I knew instinctively what it meant, but I didn’t go any deeper than that. Then I started asking, “What is life? Where does it come from?” I had nothing to say about mine. I just existed one day. We all just, one day, exist. From what?
Well, I know, our mom and dad, and I know the science. But that’s not what I’m talking about. The more I thought about it, the deeper it took me, and the more profound my appreciation of it became. I mean, what is life? What is the soul? The dictionary definition is, “Well, the soul is the thing that animates us, that gives us our individuality and so forth.”
Yeah, but it’s much more than that. The whole question of life has become a deeply profound one to me. It’s nothing you have any control over in creating. You can certainly destroy it yourself. You can destroy your own. You can destroy others. But you cannot give yourself life. You have no concept that you even are alive for how many months after you’re born?
And it’s that unique. It’s that precious, and who are we? All of us, who are we? We are the product — we are the result — of our parents. We had no choice in that. We have no awareness of it, even. We accept our parents, and for all practical purposes (there are exceptions to everything) we love our parents unconditionally. It’s part of the human condition.
Now, I know, not all of us do, but on balance we all just — without reservation and without condition — love our parents. Yet we didn’t choose them. There’s no way we could. Yet we’re all unique. We are completely different from one another in so many ways, and I just one day stopped to think how we’re all so busy and life is so much a part of existence, people don’t stop to think how rare it is.
Even though there are billions of people on the planet, it’s rare; it’s unique. So many aspects of it are rare and unique, and I have just evolved a deep appreciation for it over the years, and it’s one of the countless things that — to me — prove the existence of God. Look, I’m gonna stop here because I didn’t mean to get this deep in the weeds with it, but I wanted to explain the answer to the question she asked as best I could.
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