The Splendid Torch

Jeff Goldblum, George Bernard Shaw, and how to stay inspired.

I’m just gonna leave this right here for you, a quicker and lighter post today. It seemed fitting with all of us staring down the barrel of another election year. Wherever you fall politically, it can be challenging not to let passion for that distract you from the work you’re here to do.

While discussing Trump’s election in 2016, late-night talk show host and comedian Stephen Colbert told Oscar-winning actor Jeff Goldblum, “I’m inspired by you, because you said that night, ‘I won’t be uninspired by this.’”

I think that’s the ticket, man. Whatever’s happening in life, whether political or personal or anything else, we can’t let it uninspire us.

Colbert goes on to ask Goldblum: “How does Jeff Goldblum stay inspired?”

“In many ways,” Goldblum says. “I like to play music of course. But I do find myself coming back to this quote by George Bernard Shaw. Let me see if I can remember it.”

Let me see if I can remember it, the man says, right before he proceeds to recite the shit out of this thing:

“This is the true joy in life — being used for a purpose considered by yourself as mighty. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I’m of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and while I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle to me.

It is a sort of splendid torch that I’ve got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

All I have to add to that is: Amen.

Here’s the video: