Quite some time ago I realised that being a cynic wasn’t serving me well.
I remember having a conversation about it with a colleague whom I greatly respect and he agreed that a cynic misses out on a lot of good things. I’m not 100% there but I’ve been working on being more accepting and curious about things rather than deciding I already know how they’re going to go and how lame they’ll probably be. I’ve tried to retire the eye roll and put the “harrumph” on hiatus.
Still, I felt a wee bit cynical about the Michael Jackson memorial yesterday and I think a lot of us felt the same way. And then we watched it. There were beautiful heartfelt comments from Brooke Shields and Smokey Robinson. Jennifer Hudson’s performance gave me shivers. Plenty of talented superstars and unknowns sang their hearts out in tribute. But the moment that killed the cynic was a couple of sweet sentences spoken by Michael’s 11 year old daughter, Paris. This devastated little girl has lost her Daddy, whom she loved. Nothing else matters. Not the tabloids or the legacy or the battles or the lawyers. Her Daddy is gone and she loved him and that’s what she wanted us all to know. And the world heard her. The cynics dissolved then and there and we cried with her and for her.