Time & Perspective Quote by Boris Kodjoe

Kodjoe’s sentence runs on like a thought he’s been rehearsing in private, which is exactly why it lands: it’s not a polished mantra, it’s the sound of someone trying to outtalk grief. The pivot comes early: “my future and Nicole’s.” He isn’t selling individual grit; he’s drawing a boundary around a shared life. That plural future quietly reframes trauma as something that threatens to colonize not just a person but a relationship.

The key verb is “wallow,” a word that carries shame. It’s not simply “feel” or “mourn,” but a sticky, self-perpetuating posture. Kodjoe’s subtext is that suffering can become an identity, even a script, and scripts are what actors know best: repeatable, reliable, dangerously familiar. When he says, “you just keep repeating what’s been happening,” he’s describing trauma’s loop in plain language, the way pain can train you to expect pain, to re-enact it through choices, avoidance, or hypervigilance.

Context matters: Kodjoe and his wife, Nicole Ari Parker, have spoken publicly about their daughter’s serious health challenges and the long tail those experiences leave behind. In that light, “at some point you have to make a choice” isn’t motivational-poster bravado; it’s triage. The intent is to claim agency without pretending the wound didn’t happen. He’s naming the brutal, unglamorous moment where survival stops being a feeling and becomes a decision you make again and again, partly for yourself, partly for the people who are still building a life with you.