Hugh Downs (1921-2020) was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer, television host, news anchor, TV producer, author, game show host, and music composer.
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From “Overcoming Cynicism,” by Hugh Downs, July 1966, Guideposts magazine.
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(…continued) Last year I sailed across the Pacific in a small boat. It was immensely satisfying to navigate that distance, even though I had a fall during the voyage that injured my spine. Back home, doctors said it required surgery.
I was taken to the hospital in a wheelchair. The operation was a success and I walked out without any help. Yet the experience added something to me.
First, the ordeal was neither fearsome nor intolerable, though from the outside it seemed so. Second, there was always someone along the corridors whose troubles and pain were worse than my own. Cheering them was not depressing or morbid, but just the opposite. I again learned the benefit of getting ‘outside myself.’
At one time I served on the Citizens’ Advisory Committee of the New York State Mental Health Association. That committee was scheduled to make one of their regular visits to patients.
I would have ducked going, if I could. I couldn’t. In our car pool the driver of our auto was a rabbi whose sense of compassion interested me.
At the hospital we walked through the clean, neat rooms. Two very disturbed boys caught our attention. One was 13, the second, perhaps two years older. The older one said very little. The younger one said nothing at all.
As the rabbi talked with them I asked a nurse, “What hope is there for these boys?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Very little,” she said.
As we were leaving, I looked over my shoulder and saw the younger boy sitting on an oak bench, all alone, staring into nothingness, the picture of endless despair.
“That boy,” I said to the rabbi, “looks very much like my own son. I can’t help it, but I’m glad—” I was starting to express thankfulness for the fact that my son was normal.
“I know how you feel,” he interrupted. “That boy is my son.”
It was days before I got over the shock of that experience.
The picture of the rabbi not only ministering to his own son, and to all the afflicted in that institution, but also moving to save me embarrassment is still vivid before my eyes. For in his agony he had learned to lose himself in his concern for others.
This was what my parents were trying to tell me as they scrimped and sacrificed to pay off a debt that was moral, not legal. It was what my boss at the radio station was saying to me when I was 22; and it was what the actor meant when he talked about playing one role 700 times.
Different people were getting the message to me, but it took a long time before I really heard and embraced as the heart of my faith the words Christ uttered to His disciples: He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
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Matthew 16:24-26 — Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Luke 22:24-27 — A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them… But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.
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Dear God, You constantly pour out Your blessings on us: help us to be a blessing to others. You gave us our hands: help us to use them to work for You. You gave us our feet: help us to use them to walk in Your ways. You gave us our voices: help us to use them to speak gentleness and truth. Help us to please You, Lord. Amen.
–author unknown
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