"You never have to say you're sorry for doing a kindness to someone else."
Shortly before passing away, "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek spoke on healing America — with kindness.
Shortly before passing away, "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek spoke on healing America — with kindness.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I talk about the phrase the United States of America and I express a bit of lament over the
00:08fact that the emphasis on the word united has decreased in recent years. We are not as united
00:16as we once were. We are a divided society. I'm not talking about politics now. You've got
00:22democrats, you've got republicans, conservatives, liberals. That's going to go on for years and
00:27years and years. But there are other divisions in our society which are having a negative impact
00:32as well.
00:49We realized, my wife Jean and I, that we have led a privileged life and we have been very fortunate
00:56to have advantages that don't come to everyone. And we feel it is incumbent upon people like us
01:04to at some point in your life to start putting back into the system to help those who are less
01:10fortunate. Because when you do that you help unify the community, the society, the division between
01:17the poor and the rich. The division between the races, the white and people of color. Divisions
01:28between those who can easily access government resources and those who can't. Divisions,
01:35and we see this more and more with the COVID-19 situation, divisions between the young people
01:42and the old people. And we wanted to do something to try and help alleviate some of the problems
01:50caused by those divisions. One of the best ways to make friends, I've discovered, is to do something
01:56nice for somebody else. And so if you can extend a hand and say, hey you're not doing too well right
02:03now, what can I do to help you? Then you have gone a long way towards eliminating some of those
02:10divisions. In our daily lives when we're confronted by little problems we often kick the
02:15can down the road. We say I'm not going to worry about that right now. I will solve that problem
02:21later on. And then all of a sudden that little dripping faucet becomes a major leak and could
02:26endanger the house. Now it's a serious problem. Governments can't do everything. And the message
02:32we wanted to send to our fellow members of the community is that, yeah, there are a lot of
02:42businesses that have had to close. You know, restaurants, bars, movie houses, sports venues,
02:50anywhere where large groups of people gather. But there are businesses that are still going strong
02:57and there are people who are employed by those businesses who are earning a living. And if those
03:03people could just look into their hearts and say, you know what, I'll have one less latte today.
03:09I'll have one less cigarette and I will take that little bit of money and earmark it to help
03:16my fellow man. That would go a long way to bringing us all together again. I feel very strongly that
03:27you never have to apologize. You never have to say you're sorry for doing a kindness to someone else.