Winter storm warnings include northeast Twin Cities

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

, you've wondered a time or two about what people will say about you when you die.

If you're lucky, they'll say something like what Conan O'Brien said last night, hours after he found out that comedian Garry Shandling died.

Shandling got his big break when one of Johnny Carson's assistants booked him on the show. He killed it.

, All Things Considered played a short, but incredibly powerful, segment of 

a 2007 interview Fresh Air did with Shandling.

Listen to him explain what he was thinking as he watched Johnny Carson double over in laughter and the audience howl.

"I'm not that funny," he said, not in a self-deprecating way.

A lot of people this week have been sending me 

 with the sister of a woman -- a special education teacher in Duluth -- who took her own life last month.

 (while I was on vacation) and that the young woman's mother had participated in the subsequent discussion, and I didn't really have anything more to say.

I write about suicide and mental illness a lot, mostly because someone has to. And when I talk to those left behind, they tell me 

 that Eleni Pinnow wrote about her sister, Aletha.

Garry Shandling -- smart, funny, universally loved Garry Shandling -- provided a glimpse into our own minds when he said "I'm not that funny."

 funny. Of course, he was. But he gave voice to that voice that's inside us all, the one that says, "I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not funny enough. I'm not lovable enough." That "this is the day the world finds out about the real you."

 fact too often is a secret to us because our reluctance to share with others what it's telling us creates its own lie: That we all don't hear the voice too.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

If  you're lucky, when you die they'll say something like what Conan O'Brien said last night, hours after he found out that comedian Garry Shandling died.

On Garry Shandling and the voice that speaks to us all

Go Deeper.

Like this?