Amazing Things Will Happen

The past few weeks, I've been following the "Tonight Show" debacle with what could be called religious fervor. I won't lie to you, Internet, I've pretty much been obsessed. I've been a huge fan of Conan O'Brien for years, and consider him a personal hero. And in a weird way, watching his dream job be taken away from him hit me on a personal level, and even affected my mood. (The idea of working towards something for years and years, only for it to be taken away from you for no good reason? Kind of depressing.)

Last night was Conan's last show as host of "The Tonight Show". And towards the end, he opened up and gave a short, but very touching "farewell speech" to the audience. You can watch whole thing right here (for some reason with music edited over top of it):



As someone who can be, and has of late been incredibly cynical, those last several sentences hit me like a ton of bricks. But it's very true. You can't change other people, or situations out of your control. And bad things will happen, there's no preventing that. But what you can do is change yourself. You can change how you deal with the hard times, and what your attitude is in life.

"To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I'll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: Please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism. It's my least favorite quality, and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

Those, my friends, are words to live by. And I'm gonna try to do just that.