Read the full transcript of renowned attorney John Tarantino’s talk titled “You Only Have One Life… Until You Have Another” at TEDxProvidence 2025 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction
JOHN TARANTINO: Good afternoon, everyone. A young boy has cancer. His skin, it’s paper thin. He has no hair, and his complexion is a sickly yellow. He has a lump in his stomach, and it hurts all day, every day. Even his mother’s loving arms cannot provide him with comfort. But the young boy, whose name is Oscar, is smart, and he is perceptive. He knows his prayers. He knows there is a God, and he knows there’s a heaven. And he prays to God that God will end his pain, that he can be happy again, like he used to be. And he asks God to take him into heaven. Oscar’s prayers are not answered, not in that life.
An immigrant from Turkey comes to the United States, to New York City, looking for new hope, a new life, a new beginning. He looks for a job. He can barely speak English, and he finds no success. Soon, whatever little money he had is gone, and he’s broke, and he’s living on the streets. His name is Haki. One day, Haki is badly and viciously beaten, and he’s left for dead in a dumpster in an alley behind a pizza restaurant. He can’t move. His body is broken and shattered, but he’s conscious and he can hear. And Haki hears a garbage truck and a trash compactor coming closer and closer, and he’s terrified. Haki asks God to watch over and protect his family in Turkey because he will no longer be there. And Haki asks God to forgive him for his sins because he is contrite, and he asks God to welcome him into paradise. Haki’s prayers are not answered, not in that life.
A man sits next to his wife in hospice. She’s waiting to die. At one time, she was young and beautiful, always smiling, always happy, always positive, always joyful, and now she is frail and weak. Her name is Pat. She turns to her husband, John, and she says, every day I pray to God that he would give me a new chance, a second chance, a new life. And she asks John, if God grants my prayer, would you choose me once again, even knowing how things would end? If so, that would make me happy. Pat’s prayers are not answered, not in that life.
Now these three little stories may seem like tragedies, ones with sad and purposeless endings. And if that’s what you have concluded, well, let me tell you that you are wrong. You are completely wrong, because as you will learn, each of these stories is actually a story of hope and strength and triumph and enduring happiness. Each of these persons, Oscar, Haki, Pat, and John, learned that they had only one life until they had another. And they also learned that God answers prayers in his own way and in his own time.
The Many Lives Within One Lifetime
Now what do I mean when I say that you have only one life until you have another? Well, we only have one chronological life on earth. But within that one chronological life, there are several discrete lives that we live. For example, think about how different your life was as a child from what it’s like today. What was important to you? What you thought would make you happy? Who you wanted to be, where you wanted to live, and who you wanted to be in your life. Probably different then than what your life is today. Probably very different. And I want you to think about your lives as we go through this talk and the discrete things that have happened.
Now, we all have one tree of life for us. But that tree has many branches. And those branches spread far and wide and in different directions. And that’s a good thing, a very good thing, because our lives are not meant to be stagnant. They’re meant to be dynamic. We are meant to change. We are meant to evolve. We are meant to grow. And each of those discrete lives may be very different one life to the other, unless, unless there is something that transcends those lives. Unless there is something that gives us worth and happiness, life after life after life.
The Source of Enduring Happiness
And there is something, there is something that gives us that continuing happiness. And that something is the compassion, the empathy, the humanity to love others, to have others in our lives. Others who we need. Others who we want to share our lives with. Others who make us happy. Because although we may have only one chronological life and many discrete lives within it, we all have one soul. And that soul was not meant to be alone. We were created to be with others. We were created to have others in our lives to love and make us happy. That’s my belief. But my belief is also supported by the data.
Let me tell you about the Harvard Happiness Project. It started in 1938, 87 years ago. It’s the longest longitudinal study of what makes people happy ever. There were 724 participants when that study began. They were young people. Today, a handful of them are still alive. They’re more than 100 years old. And each of those participants, decade by decade, was asked, what makes you happy? And they were to record the answers in a journal. What makes you happy? And of course, the answers differed as they grew and aged and evolved.
And so much so, that if you read the journal entries of someone who had lived a long time, you probably would conclude that you were reading about different person’s lives, not the same person’s life. That’s how much they changed, decade to decade.