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Milestones
With Ron Suskind
Featured in "Life 360" on PBS
Thursday, Jan. 10, 2002; 3 p.m. EST

Marriage. Graduation. Death. Birth. Adoption. Love. Competition. Loss.

Life 360 examines the defining moments of our lives: Milestones. They are the times when radical change occurs, either by natural evolution or catastrophe. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind talked about the milestones in your life and his on Jan. 4, 2002 at 3 p.m. EST.

Suskind is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter whose book, "A Hope in the Unseen," chronicles the journey of young Cedric Jennings from a poor, inner city Washington, D.C. neighborhood to the elite environs of Brown University. Ron is seasoned reporter and writer with a special knack for discovering amazing human beings and surprising stories wherever he travels.

The transcript follows.

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washingtonpost.com: Ron Suskind should be with us shortly.

washingtonpost.com: This discussion will most likely be rescheduled. Stay tuned for details.

washingtonpost.com: Mr. Suskind should be with us momentarily.

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Suskind, what attracted you to this subject in particular? Why do you want to call people's attention to the idea of milestones?

Ron Suskind: I think milestones help us to understand the idea of distance traveled and yet to travel in our lives -- certainly under the idea that life is more of a journey, more than where you end up. I guess you'd call me a process person, rather than a product person.

Alexandria, Va.: How have the events you've experienced shaped your life?

Ron Suskind: Well, I think the experiences you have are the thing that gives shape to your life. I think many of us feel we are a piece of clay at the start and there are clearly inclinations and dispositions that are with us from the beginning, but I'm very much a believer in the potency of experience. In my book, I start with a Tennyson Quote: "I am a part of all I have met, yet all experience is an arch." That's how experience shapes us. I am not of an untraditional background. I'm a middle class Jewish male, raised in the suburbs. My father died when I was 14, but these things happen to countless people.

But the key is not so much what occurs, but our response as individuals to what occurs in our lives. I think the response is the key, that's where the shaping takes place.

Aspen Hill, Md.: I loved reading your articles about Cedric Jennings. I did not realize that you had written a book about him. How is he doing these days?

Ron Suskind: Well, he's doing great. The book is "A Hope in the Unseen." It came out in mid-1998. And its required reading across the country at campuses.

Cedric graduated from Brown in 1999 with a 3.3 average double majoring in Education and APplied Math. By the way, he had a 960 SAT score, so you take your pick, which number's right: the 960 or 3.3.

He worked for about a year and a half at Microstrategy after graduation and in the spring Michael Saylor laid off several people, including Cedric but he is now halfway through his first year at Harvard's school of education where he's getting his masters.

It's a success story, not just that Cedric won out, but also from the book and the stories that won the PUlitzer, Cedric is identical to kids across urban America. Many say they never get to the buffet table of opportunity.

It's recognition of the countless children of color who are left behind for no good reason.

Ron Suskind: Cedric is great and I'm sure if he was here he'd send his regards.

Melbourne, Fla.: I watched "Life 360" last night for the first time and it really hit home as I am a young widow 48 years old. I can't imagine what it must be like for someone who have been together for so many years. The only question I have is who was the artist singing a song called "white winos" I didn't catch his name and have been all through the Web site for some indication of who he was. That song was very meaningful for me and I would love to buy a copy. Thanks.

washingtonpost.com: White Winos is on the Album: The Last Man on Earth by Loudon Wainwright III Information on Loudon Wainwright can be found on the Life 360 web site (unfortunately kind of hidden) in Life 360 on the Air: http://www.pbs.org/opb/life360/milestones/tv.htm

Ron Suskind: I can tell you this. I think the piece about the clock is really about the mysteries of the human heart. About the randomness of fate's hand in guiding us. These people in the story happen to discover while under the clock as the hands of the clock ticked. In some ways, I know as well, many people who have found love at all points in their lives and it's always in the moment they're looking for it the least.

My mother was a widow at 41, so I understand how a life can just explode into darkness at that moment. But I've also seen how it c an mend, which is what it really does best.

Ron Suskind: After all, at the end of the day, love is an act of faith. And that's what makes it so exciting all the time, all the way through.

Arlington, Va.: Hello Mr. Suskind,

I read your book, "A Hope in the Unseen" about two years ago and have recommended it to many friends and family members. It really gave me insight into how economic and educational disparity in this country contributes to our social ills. Whenever someone tries to argue against affirmative action in education I ask them to read this book before we continue our discussion. Anyway, I am curious about how Cedric Jennings is doing. Do you have an update on him?

Ron Suskind: Great. That must mean you've given it to a lot of people. I'm delighted that you're giving the book to people. That is in a way how it has continued to crest slowly. It's not what you think -- in a way, it's a story that makes you laugh and cry.

WHat I say is that the book is not an advertisement for Affirmative Action. It shows the imperfections and how it is at this juncture probably the only reasonable remedy we've been able to find and there will come a day when we do not need affirmative action. Because it does create a bending of people's ideas about human value. Which is utterly mendacious and awful.

The book attempts to tackle a deeper core of what we share. Cedric or any of us -- we display our value, which I think is evenly distributed, in our own way. The book is about how each of us display what we are given. Some of us match up with the markets better than others. It's the measuring stick which is imperfect, not the divine spark.

And readers find themselves crossing divides, almost unwillingly. That's been the trick of the whole experience. That's the trick of my life -- to find narratives that allow people to get to the deep aquifer of the shared.

It's as close to a statement of purpose as I can professionally and personally. If I can do that a little bit, I feel like I'm finding a light and allowing it to shine.

Washington, D.C.: Right now the only milestone I can think of is Sept. 11. But, what's the difference between a milestone and just a major event? I guess maybe a milestone is something you always look back on as you catalogue your life in your mind. I don't know that I will look back on Sept. 11 in this way. It was the most horrifying isolated event I've lived through, but it didn't change my life in a profound way. I am still the same person, or at least no more of a different person than I am from living (societally, not personally) through AIDS and poverty and cancer and genocide... these have all made up the fabric of my existence on Earth, collectively. Do you think the media may be exaggerating how much of a "milestone" Sept. 11 will be in the lives of people who lived through it?

Ron Suskind: It is a tendency of the media to exaggerate, attempting to find the limits of what is considered news. To plot out the edges of a trendline.

The key question in your question is providing the definition for yourself. What is a milestone verses a major event.

If it effects you some profound way, then it is a milestone. And thereby a marker along the road that you can look back on at many points up ahead. If not, it's probably just a major event.

I think in this case, we're still mapping out -- each of us -- how much of a milestone or major event Sept. 11 will b.e I think we can only know that for sure as we move further from it. At some point it settles for each person to say "That was a milestone" or not.

So, the seeds of the answer are right in your question. It's a very personal answer for everybody.

Washington, D.C.: Are there cultural milestones?

Ron Suskind: Cultural in general, sure.

Milestones that are defined through the lens of culture, and that lens is one that each of us has a pocket-sized lens of our own personal experience as well as the broader one of the society. To view milestones in terms of that.

It's interesting. There are people across the globe -- the jews, italians, irish, african-americans, kenyans -- each of them is a culture and cultures when they attach to peoples tend to be things that move because people tend to go on journeys and they have forward motion and by definition cross milestones at some point.

The ancient story of the Jews in the desert is one of the great western narratives I feel. It's one that's had great effect on a culture, the Jews, on a journey. Mt. Sinai, crossing the river jordan -- milestones. Fleeing from Egypt. And the question becomes how particular cultures interpret their own journeys.

Baltimore, Md.: Do you keep a journal? Do you make a mental note to remember events or is it not really a formal process for you?

Ron Suskind: It's not a formal process, it's a process of washed, pocketed and folded notes. I pick things up as I go, like any journalist. My venue is probably broader than a journalist with special beats. At this point, I look in a lot of different directions all at once. I'm like velcro, things stick to me and I figure out what's interesting.

A lot of my best insights come from outside -- from talking to my wife. We sit around and talk about everything. It's a converstation of great frankness and candor. Story ideas emerge from that, or sitting with my kids, very close to home.

In general, though, a story idea -- an idea should be one where you just have to know how it turns out. That is astounding, astonishing, amazing, terrifying, my head snaps around. But by the same token, often the best stories are not from the unique or stunning event -- they are from the quieter flow of the human condition and human drama that is quite universal. Everyone's life is in its way interesting. Everyone has at least one great story to tell.

I ask someone to tell me the best story you know and they tell me.

Columbus, Ga: Isn't everything really an "act of faith"? We make decision based on the best available knowledge at that particular time but we really don't know how our decisions will turn out. Most of the time, there're exactly as we thought but every once in awhile they go off on a tangent and end up taking us in directions we never thought about.

Ron Suskind: I think that's eloquent, I agree with that. It conjures another kind of thing. It conjures another Tennyson poem, "Memoriam."

I think in this modern world, we're sometimes too focused on the answer. There are almost none of those.

Chicago, IL: Dear Mr. Suskind,

I am getting married at the end of May. We are having a big wedding with a band, a fancy cake, a big white dress, the works. And I very excited about it.

Here's my question though: my fiance and I live together, have co-mingled some of our finances, and in all ways plan our lives and future as a couple. Given this, are we going to feel at all different once we are actually married? After the wedding and the honeymoon, our day-to-day lives will be essentially unchanged. So why, if at all, will it feel different to be married? (For the record, I ask only out of curiousity. I don't think we should or should not feel different. I just wonder what will happen and why.) Thanks for taking my question.

Ron Suskind: Okay. Well clearly you have a milestone just up ahead. There is no doubt that marriage is a key milestone in our lives. Sort of the discovery of the loved one.

How will you feel different. I can only offer you the limited experience I have as one who's been married since 1986. I think the big difference is that there is something that is transforming about standing in front of all your kin and friends and, if appropriate, the eyes of God, and testifying to the idea of eternal love and unbreakable commitment will alter you. It's amazing how words -- especially ones that match a moment of precipitation as a marriage is -- can change us. We are important to those words. We are the thinking and talking beast.

You will feel different -- the house, the shared finances, that will allow for certain continuity, but there's no doubt when you arrive back from your honeymoon, you'll feel as though the people who are in this apartment have been replaced by other people, who are grounded and bonded to each other in a different way. And freer in terms of their fundamental selves and how they express themselves than the people who were there before.

That bond, commitment, offers a kind of canopy beneath which miracles may occur in discovering yourself and how one person can find a home with one other person.

Falls Church, Va.: How did you get involved with "Life 360?"

Ron Suskind: I'd done a few things with Nightline where I'd been on for a couple shows in and around the book and at one point I acted as a guide on another documentary and some of the people I met became friendly and were involved in "Life 360." It seemed natural in terms of what I was doing. I had a kind of economy and I write for various magazines and do speeches at universities and I'm also studying another book, but there was a place for the television.

The idea of the show, which is so attractive to me and the other contributors, is that there's a sense that the show provides an improvisational format and a new way to tell stories that are potent, effective, engaging. But if we're lucky we'll create something that has lasting effect. And this has everyone involved in the show being very risk embracing.

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Suskind, Do you believe in fate?

Ron Suskind: I certainly believe in the power of fate. I 've learned a lot about that in the last 10 years. Part of that is because I've tried to get into the shoes of other people and feel what they feel as they are enlivened by fate. I believe in the power of fate and am increasingly appreciative of the place of faith across every religious designation and some personal designations.

Sometimes you only get when people take on a lot of education, they feel it is somehow improper to publicly attest to the power of faith. I think that is a shortcoming of how we educate each other and what education can do. People think they're omniscient, they know everything. People think faith sometimes is muddleheaded and dreamy and they don't want to invite people like that to dinner parties.

Still, we must appreciate how defining it is in people's lives and how transforming it can be.

DC: Milestones are an interesting topic ... especially to me at this "milestone" in my life. My husband and I have recently found out that we can't have children of our own. Adoption is a wonderful option, but not as simple of a process as getting pregnant. We're both a bit hesitant to start the process ... so many "what if's" at the end of the line. Do you have any advice for a couple? When is a good time in life to adopt? Is there ever a "good" time?

Ron Suskind: I think you're hitting on a point at the end there. That there's never an ideal time for any life event to occur really. If you try to time it right, you lose the point about the best things being random.

No there's no best time to give birth or adopt. People who make those plans are essentially succeeded or replaced by people who become parents. It's like you're afraid of a baby. There isn't as much lead up time as with pregnancy, it's very sudden with adoption.

You're gonna try to plan, but the people sitting here are not going to exist then, you're going to be replaced by different people who will feel different and then they'll make the plans.

In terms of adoption, the world is filled with babies for whom this country looks like a golden city on a hill. I know lots of people who've adopted and it is no better or worse than giving birth to a child -- simply different. Every bit as consequential and life changing. THe connections are a bit different -- no resemblance -- but a different kind of connective tissue grows between you and this child, which is given to you by the wider world and that's a connection which is just as profound as the genetic connection.

Some people even go so far as preferring it.

Bethesda, Md.: what has been the greatest milestone in your life?

Ron Suskind: I think it's hard to say "greatest." At the end of the day and if I'm on life support and cognizant, I've made it.

IF I have to pick one, the greatest in terms of what has occured, was when I Met my wife. Because as I look back I realize that truly when you find that other half who sees in you things you yourself cannot see and hopefully you and that person as well, you realize that everything flows from that. In my case, everything did. In terms of a milestone.

The architecture of my upbringing are different, but in terms of a moment in which you have choices, meeting my wife Cornelia and the life that has flowed from it, which is an astonishing life in terms of its surprises and moments of transformation -- of my children being born -- that's really the moment. It's like a trapeze catch. Sometimes its made and sometimes not.

And I am each day thankful for that.

Ron Suskind: I suggest if you have a free minute, to watch the show tomorrow night -- which is a terrific show and one small part which I can attest to, which I hope you watch for completely selfish reasons -- about a story I tell -- a monologue on a stage with props about a transforming event in my life -- when the men landed on the moon in 1969. But I think it shows how we often don't realize the important moments until they're past us. Sometimes we pass them and don't even realize it. It's like an ongoing line. From Rober t Penn Warren in "All the Kings Men" -- he writes "life is strange and changeful and the crysal is in the steel at the point of fracture and the toad bears a precious jewel. And the meaning of moments passes as gently as the wind that barely rustles the leaf of the willow." and the beauty of that suggestion is that it goes to each one of us to feel that breeze and that's a better recommendation than to feel a life of worry.

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