Super Soul Summer: Wes Moore - Is Your Job Your Life's Purpose

0:00I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Author and speaker Wes Moore is born in Baltimore in 1978. Wes was only three years old when a rare virus claimed his father Wesley's life. His mother moved the family to the Bronx and struggled to send Wes and his sisters to private school, but Wes felt caught between two worlds. He became a discipline problem. His grades plummeted, and he was put on academic and disciplinary probation.

0:47At 13, his mother sent him to military school. After four attempts at running away, Wes says he eventually learned to respect himself and others By graduation six years later, he was company commander of 125 cadets. Wes went on to Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In 2000, the same year Wes was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, he discovered there was another young man, also named Wes Moore, who grew up just blocks away from his own childhood home. The other Wes Moore was awaiting trial for felony murder and was later sentenced to life in prison without parole. The story of their two divergent lives became the basis of his best-selling book, The Other, Wes Moore.

1:35Today, Wes says, in order to come alive, we need to embrace living and working for something greater than ourselves. He believes that success and service are intertwined. It is the focus of his book, The Work. One of the things that you crystallize so beautifully in the work is that the one thing I think all of us are searching for is a life that matters and a life that has meaning. And I know that the only way to do that is through some form of service. And you break it down and help us to understand that service is not some lofty, I must now go and join. It is simply... It's finding that thing that makes your heart beat a little bit faster.

2:19Okay. And one thing I'm always very clear about is there's no single definition of service, right? It's not like everyone must go do this because that's service. Yes. It's whether your thing is young people, whether your thing is seniors, whether your thing is the environment, whether your thing is veterans, whether your thing is whatever your thing happens to be, as long as you know you are part of that larger journey and part of that larger conversation, then you know you're doing your service. Yeah. First of all, let me ask you, do you stay in contact with the other Westmore? I do. I saw Wes just now a few weeks back.

2:53And it's interesting because I know there are some people who do have a problem with that. And there are people who have come to me and said, you know, I don't know why you're still in touch with him. Don't you know he's a murderer or so on and so forth? And I say with all due respect, I know why Wes is in prison. And I don't need anybody to remind me. I've never once made excuses for his actions, nor will I ever make excuses for his actions. But there are a couple things that I do know. One is I never reached out to Wes to write a book. So I don't know why now that a book is written why I would stop reaching out to him.

3:22And the second thing that I do know is that even our worst decisions don't separate us from the circle of humanity. Right. And if we're not willing to understand lives like Wes, then we're doomed to keep on repeating the tragedy of lives like the ones he has led. And I feel like the worst possible takeaway from tragedy is when we act like tragedy didn't happen. That is absolutely the truth. and we're never going to solve our incarceration problem unless we're willing to look at the people who are incarcerated as fellow human beings. It just is not going to change. So the other Wes Moore gave us a new way of thinking about life and fate and destiny.

4:01And now the work picks up where that left off. Why did you feel the need to do this? Because I felt like with the other Wes Moore, I wanted to explore how do we survive? Coming from tough conditions, coming from crazy backgrounds, how do we survive? And as I finished, I realized I finished that process of understanding how to survive. I never asked the question, so what does it mean to come alive? That's the essential question. After returning from his tour of duty as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, Wes was accepted in 2006 as a White House fellow working for the State Department under then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

4:45A year later, Wes moved to New York to begin a lucrative career in finance on Wall Street. Despite his rise to success, Wes was uncertain about his direction. In 2012, he left his Wall Street job, returned to his beloved Baltimore, determined to give back. One of the things I love that you say, do you use Kindle? I do. You say, when we're children, our lives are relentlessly paced. Someone tells us when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, when to study. And you have two beautiful children under the age of four, and their calendars are already stuffed with activities. But something important shifts in the way we live almost from the moment we leave school.

5:27Our adult lives begin with the first moment of stillness. What do you mean by that? It's the first time when you aren't on a forced schedule. Yes. Where someone's not telling you, you must do this, you must do that. Now people are simply saying, what would you like to do, but understand that there are consequences on either side. Yes. You know, where it's like when we start high school, there's this moment of fear. And then it gets normalized. Yes. And then you start college, there's a moment of fear. And then things get normalized. Life is one of the first moments where you feel that moment of fear, and then the choice is yours about whether or not it gets normalized or not.

6:02And that stillness is, I think, terrifying for most. But actually, I think that stillness is one of the most freeing times, as long as we can approach it with that type of mentality. Absolutely. The thing that you were told when you were going to Wall Street. Yes. Yeah. Share that. It was, I was with a dear mentor of mine, President Brody, who's a former president of Johns Hopkins University. And I'd just come back from Afghanistan. And he was like, so what are you planning on doing next with your life? And I went to tell him I was going to go work on Wall Street. And I expected him to be excited.

6:34And he was like, really? And I told him, I said, that's not the answer that I thought you'd give me. And he said, why are you going to do that? And I started giving all these reasons. I said, well, I'm going to help my grandparents. I'm going to help my grandparents. I'm, you know, helping financially my family. I can be around really smart people, all this kind of stuff. And he said to me, he said, you know, you just explained to me for the past three minutes why you're doing it. And not once did the words because I'm passionate come out of your mouth. And he said, listen, Wes, I'm never going to judge you.

7:00and I'm never going to judge the decisions that you make, particularly if you feel like they're in the best interest of your family. The only thing I ask is this. The moment that you feel that you can leave that place, leave. Because every moment you stay longer than you have to, you will become extraordinarily ordinary. Wow. That felt like an indictment. Because I feel like we all spend our time trying to be extraordinary in some way, shape, or form. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And the idea that you think you're doing what is the right thing to do, and this person is telling you, but the longer you do it, you will become extraordinarily ordinary because if you're not passionate about it, then you'll never be able to fall into your own truth.

7:45Absolutely. When you were first told about going to Wall Street, though, you said, in the back of my mind, I heard the rattle of expensive handcuffs. I love that line. Those things are real. Right? It's like, well, you know, now my kids are going to this school, or I have a second car I take care of, or whatever it is. Those things that we're now making decisions based on material. Yes, how do I now, I got here, I have to keep doing this to maintain the life as I now know it. That's exactly right. And also, it was even difficult for me to explain that to my family. I mean, I was now living in a world that my family had no idea even existed.

8:25Yeah. And I remember one time I was working down on Wall Street and I went to go take the train to go see my grandparents who were still living in the Bronx. The same house they came to when they came to the United States. The same house they raised their kids. They raised us in this little small home in the Bronx. And they refused to leave. And refused to leave. Refused to leave. And I went to go see them. And I remember I was sitting there and we were eating oxtail and pig's feet and all the things my family loved to eat. And my grandfather asked me, he said, so what is it exactly that you do?

8:57And I wasn't sure how to answer him because he knew that I was a banker, but he had no idea what about exotic derivatives and all this kind of stuff that we were doing. He knows about the banker when you go to the bank. That's exactly right. And that's what my grandmother told him. My grandmother said, she almost saved me. She said, dear, you know what he does. He said, he's a banker. And she said, in fact, I'm going to tell Miss Johnson to go do her deposits with you. Oh, my goodness. not understanding that if Ms. Johnson came down to my office, Ms. Johnson wouldn't be able to get into my building.

9:27Ms. Johnson, if she handed me her deposit slip, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Yeah. And then all I said was, thank you, Mama Wynne. I appreciate that. I wasn't even sure how to even explain to my family what it was that I did. And then I'm thinking, I can't even explain to them what I do. How can I explain it to myself? Mm-hmm. Had you been feeling a sense of unease or unhappy? Were you all the way to unhappy or just a sense of, what am I doing? It was actually, I think, an interesting marriage of both that I was having a difficult time understanding which one was which. Where I felt like I knew with everything going on that this wasn't where my joy lasted.

10:09And I knew it was incredibly risky. I knew it was incredibly risky to go out, but I think I had to make a very conscious decision that I would rather flirt with failure than never dance with my joy. And if the idea between, because I felt like I was constantly searching through an occupation to find my joy, and I realized it's not about your occupation, it's about your work. Because they're two different things. My work was where my greatest joy actually started combining with the world's greatest need. And that's when I said to myself... That's what real service is. That's what real service is.

10:41Yeah. So you now believe that there is an evolution that lives in us all, and it leads us to where do we belong. And how do we know how to follow that? I love the phrasing of that. There's an evolution that lives inside all of us, and it leads us to where we belong. You know, oftentimes I would think that, oh, well, I'm just waiting on God to tell me where he wants me to go. Yeah. I'm just, God, tell me. Tell me what is it you want me to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've come to a very clear understanding now. It's not that God's not talking to me. It's that for so long, I just haven't been listening.

11:19Yes. I've been allowing so much of the noise to cloud this conversation I'm supposed to be having. And I've been so distracted that he's been sending messages this whole time. Oh, you are so correct. I see that all the time. Because your life is always speaking to you. It's always speaking to you. Okay, so we talk a lot about calling on Super Soul Sunday. How do you know when it truly is a calling or if it's just something you just really want a lot? That is one of the most challenging things to to understand where it's like how do how do I know? Yes, that I'm doing exactly what it is that I'm supposed to be doing.

11:53I Think about it the way that I knew What it was that I was supposed to be doing when I first started working with college students when we for when we first found the Bridget U It was because I knew this was a problem and this was a challenge that I was gonna work on no matter what I then tried to figure out a way of, so how do I make it what I do with every day of my life? And the reason I became so passionate about education, higher education, helping that transition was because I thought to myself, you don't understand my story without understanding the role that education played in it. Where, where I feel like all of our lives are like homes that are built on stilts, right?

12:28And our experiences are the different stilts, right? So for me, there's a, there's a military stilt, there's a finance stilt, there's a White House stilt, There's all these stilts. You can chop one of those stilts out, and the house wobbles. Yeah. But the house stays up. You could chop out the finance stilt, and chop out the White House stilt, and chop out the military stilt. There is one thing that is not a stilt. It's my foundation, and that's my education. If you chop that, the whole house crumbles. Nothing else makes sense. And so the way and the reason that I knew that this was the work that I was supposed to be doing, when I said, you know what?

13:04I'm gonna work on this no matter what. That you're not gonna give me away from it. That's how you know. That's how you know. That's how you know. I'm gonna work on it no matter what. No matter what. So why not find a way? So even if I have to do a night job and a part-time this in order to be able to do this, I'm gonna do this. You know where to find me. You know where to find me. You know where to find me. I love what you quote David Graber is saying. Huge swaths of people spend their entire working lives, this struck me so, performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed.

13:37Wow, that struck me so, because imagine that. You're working all day at something that you secretly don't even believe needs to be done. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yes. So you have a solution for this. What is it? Well, you know, and I think it's something that we watch continue to become compounded, right? I think as industries change. I feel it every time I go to a meeting that I know I didn't have to be in. Like, I want those minutes back. I want it back. I feel like I am meeting my life away. That's right.

14:14Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting because even when we, you know, with our work with students where they'll say, you know, you're going to get asked the same question over and over and over again. That question is, so what's your major? And you're going to get asked that question as if it's the most important question you will ever be asked in your life. Yeah. And the message that I always want to share is it's not, though. It's not. I finished my undergrad experience 14 years ago, and no one ever asked me, so Wes, would you major in college? When I read that, I thought, I have lived all these years, and no one has ever asked me what was my major.

14:43Who was your major? Nobody's ever asked what was my, I hadn't thought of that until I read that. You're right. Nobody ever asked, because the real really doesn't care. It doesn't care. They want to care what you're going to do, what is your real work. That's right. What is your real work? And who will you fight for? Yeah. Who will matter to you when it might just be you two standing there at first. Because that's the thing that people will always remember about you. You know, your job will change, your occupation will change, and all this kind of stuff. But your work, that stays consistent. And that's what people are going to always remember when it comes time to think about what was your impact on this planet.

15:17You began the work talking about what it's like to be fired at. Yeah. Can you take us to that first time? It is, uh, it's something you can't prepare for. And it's interesting because the military tries to do this thing where they prepare you for it. They put you through live fire drills, and they have you crawl on the ground while they're firing real machine gunfire just so you get used to the sound. Yeah, there's no way to prepare for that thing when you hear gunfire, and you know that gunfire is now aiming towards you. But there's almost an eerie piece about it as well, where everything does get very quiet.

15:53When you know, and are you consciously thinking, I could die in this moment? Yeah. I was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. And every time we left the wire, you almost carry this fatalistic blanket along with you, where you knew that we can train all we want. But if you happen to be the unlucky person standing in the wrong spot when a sniper takes a shot, if you happen to be the unlucky soul who's sitting in the wrong seat of a Humvee when that Humvee hits an IED, there's nothing you can do. There's no training. There's no training. There's no training. And so I think you almost have this fatalistic idea.

16:31So what does that do to you when you live in that space? Because I did an interview with a woman who'd come back from Iraq who was having a lot of trouble and her hand had been blown off. And she was saying that one of the issues is you come back from war and your family thinks you are the same person. Yes. But there's no way you can be the same person because you have seen things and done things and been in a space that the people who are in your kitchen cannot even imagine. And so it changes you. Yeah. And it's supposed to change you, right? Everybody is going to come back from that experience different.

17:11Not necessarily damaged, not necessarily beyond repair, but different. And in ways that you're not even prepared for. I mean, when I came back from Afghanistan, I had a problem with lights. Lights. No one told me I would have a problem with lights when I came back. And it makes sense now, I guess in retrospect, where we were in a place where you had 100 % light security. So there were no white lights around. We weren't in buildings with white lights because white lights can be seen from miles away. So the only lights we had when the sun went down were little green lights and little red lights because those cannot be seen from far away.

17:45If you have white lights, it's like all night. Wow. So you then go from that environment to then two weeks later when you're in Times Square. And you expect the brain to transition smoothly. You're teaching people how to drive when they're in a combat zone where we don't stop no matter what. You keep moving. Even if it means you're pushing cars out of the way, you don't stop. How do you transition when this was your reality for so long? and then you're then forced to instantaneously just kind of return back to the sense of normality. And I think it's also really difficult even for the family members.

18:23I always thought soldiers had it toughest. You know, we had it hardest. We had to deal with the stuff. They're not dealing with anything. But we have good days and we have some really bad days, but we always had each other. Who do family members have when they're back home, when they're just hoping that the phone doesn't ring? And when you come back, you're not sure. Like, you know, they want to be supportive, but they don't know exactly what that means. And so almost by default, there's a sphere of saying, I don't want to ask the wrong question. Right. I don't want to be offensive. I don't want to trigger something.

18:54I don't want to trigger anything. So therefore, I'll say nothing. Yeah. Oftentimes not realizing that saying nothing, the interpretation on our side is, that means you don't care. What should family members say or do? I don't know what to say. Tell me what you need to share. What should we be saying? best thing to happen for service people who are coming back is to us to be able to actually have real conversations with them and know that there won't be that fear of what that conversation will trigger. I came back wanting to tell stories about my guys. You know, what was it like working with the Afghan army?

19:30Like, these are things I actually wanted to talk about if people were curious enough to ask. And I think that, you know, oftentimes when we have even this concept of thanking us for our service. The reason why service people have a very mixed feeling about even that statement is because thank you for your service oftentimes is the end of a conversation and never the beginning of a conversation. Ooh, that's good. It's, it's thank you for your service. Now let me move on and go catch my flight. Thank you for your service. And I'm gonna go grab my coffee. And that's the thing that I hope that, that, that I think many service people, they want, they're not, they, they want to share their experiences, good and bad.

20:05But they want there to be that sense of true interest. What did working in the bureaucracy of government, the White House, what did that do? I think that told me how potent government is. And I think it taught me how impotent government is to solve our problems. Where I feel like we sometimes will just lean on elected officials to do everything. It's like, well, that's the mayor's job. That's the governor's job. That's the president's job. That's the Congress's job. That's this that's just without everyone's thinking but what's our job in all this? Yeah We have very real responsibilities and we have very real power in order to impact true change within somebody's life Which should be our fundamental goal now grant I'm not taking anything away from the size of the budgets that they do what they deal with very big numbers and they can make very big Sweeping impacts by strokes of pens, but I also know particularly after spending time down there if we're just sitting around waiting for them to figure things out, then we're doing ourselves and our future and our souls a real disservice.

21:05All my friends in Baltimore want you to run for mayor. They all say, maybe he's going to do it. You think maybe he'll do it? Do you think maybe he'll do it? I love my work. And that's the thing, I realize, there is no job. I know people who have no job title, who do amazing things on this world. And I know people with really big titles who do absolutely nothing. So my goal and my job has never been to search for a title. My goal and my job has always been to search for impact. That's what I always want to be. I want to be impactful. And where do you think you can have the most impact? I think right now my impact is making sure that we can help address what's going on in terms of college completion for so many kids, particularly first generation, lower income, first and family students, minority students, where, you know, it's the amount of students who are starting college and not even making it past their first year is astonishing.

22:05And so basically I said, and our team said, why can't we just reinvent the freshman year of college? Totally change the way we look at it and address the big boulder issues like financial aid and the big boulder issues like the on-ramping orientation. We just have to do a better way of creating the supports around students that so many other kids have already gotten inherently. You also say in the work that so many young people have an automatic kill switch. Yes. What do you mean by that? So I feel like there's this common narrative that we don't belong certain places, where as we get to a certain level, it's almost like this imposter syndrome.

22:44Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where we get to a place and it's like, you're just waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, What are you doing here? What are you doing here? How'd you get in here? Did you feel that yourself sometimes? Very much so. I mean, I felt it bad. Where with every accomplishment that I got, I just felt like I'm not supposed to be here. I think about when I was announced as a Rhodes Scholar. People were like, whoa, you're a Rhodes Scholar. People say that even when they don't even know what it means. They just know, whoa, you smart. But you know what it is? And my answer to them is always, but the Rhodes Scholarship was never intended for me.

23:19If Cecil Rhodes knew that I had received his money, this man would be turning. He wouldn't be just turning. He'd be doing backflips, sideflips. He would be a dancing emoji backwards. Exactly. All in his grave. Because I was never the intended recipient. But I know how many people had to fight and work. And even if they didn't know me personally, they woke up every morning with the hope of me. Bruh. That is it. With the hope of me. Yeah. And so when we have so many people who have this kill switch, this imposter syndrome, because they feel like I'm not worthy of this. Don't you think that that is because that there's so many people, and I'm thinking about in our own African-American culture, who don't really know the history.

24:07they don't really understand that somebody had the hope of you. Yes. And they don't really understand what Maya used to say that James Baldwin told her, that your crown has been paid for. Mm. Mm. All you have to do is put it on your head and wear it. Don't you think it comes from not knowing where you've come from? That's right. Yeah. And the power in which that we come from. and understand that we are never in a room that we don't belong in. We're not in a room. Whatever room that we're in, we're not in that room because of someone's benevolence. We're not in that room because of someone's social experiment.

24:49We're in that room because we belong there. And we then have to have that confidence that not only do we belong there, but we're not just there for wallpaper. Yeah, and so that kill switch is you ask kids what do they want or how do they want to do something, and they automatically say, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. And there's almost this fear even having an answer. I think even with my own childhood, I think one of the most dangerous things that was going on with me is if you asked me, Wes, what do you want to do with your future? I couldn't give you an answer. And so life has a very nasty and cynical sense of humor with those who don't have any type of vision as to where they want to take their lives.

25:26Your sister has an interesting definition of hell. Share that. She said, my definition of hell would be one day God showing me everything I could have accomplished had I only tried. And so we have to then, and she'll tell it much better than I can, but she'll say that we have to then live our life. So when that conversation happens, God is going to put his hand on our shoulder and say, job well done. Yeah. You had so many opportunities in Afghanistan on a daily basis to see heroic efforts. What is your true definition of a hero? My truest definition of a hero is someone who can proudly and unabashedly stand in their truth and know that despite consequences and despite repercussions, which might not even be known at the time, they know that their truth and their actions are going to be the thing that is going to carry them through.

26:26Heroism for me is not necessarily just something where you just throw your life in danger or you, you know, put yourself out there for whatever, you know, for whatever it is. It is just simply this idea of knowing that this universe needs an action that you are now prepared to give it. Yeah. And I think the thing that you really articulate so beautifully in the work is that you were one of those people who in the beginning, I think, believed in this sort of institutionalized idea that you go to school, you go to work for a company, You find a job that makes you feel secure. You do all the things that the people say we should do.

27:06And now that is fortunately changing, that we get to decide for ourselves how to design that for ourselves. When people are giving you counsel and people are giving you advice, the vast majority of counsel that you'll get is coming from a place of love and from a place of peace. But then understand, at that end, you have to make that decision and be perfectly comfortable with the decision that this is in the best interest of me and where I am right now. And one thing we know about all the decisions that we make is you are never going to make a decision that 100 % of the people say that's a great decision.

27:38Ain't that the truth? Never. And that's okay. The thing I then try to lean on with that is don't let people that don't matter too much matter too much. We're worried about what X person thinks or what Y person thinks. I'm like, why do they have so much influence over your decision-making or your life? because the decision that you make is not going to impact them, nor is anything they do should it impact you. So don't let people that don't matter too much matter too much. Whoa, that's such a big tweetable moment. Let's just pause here for all the Twitterati out there. Ooh, that is so good. What is it you, when you wrote the work, you were writing it for yourself in a way.

28:23And in the end, I think you came to some really valuable conclusions, observations, perspective about what that work means in all of our lives. You know, I often say that I think we're all striving for the same thing, and that is to have the fullest expression of ourselves as human beings. And what I see you saying in the work is that that's how we do it. Right? It is. And it's also why we do it. Yeah. Because I came into a transition where I used to think that, oh, we should tell everyone to get involved because it's the best way to be selfless. Mm-hmm. I realize now it's actually the best way also to be selfish.

29:06And what I mean by that is this. You know, I have a dear friend in Baltimore who is an amazing father, three wonderful girls. He's an engineer. I said, can you come spend some time, explain what an engineer does? And he says, listen, I admire what you guys do. But he said, my community service is, I try to make sure that my daughters are as best prepared for the world as possible. And he's a fantastic father. And my response back to him was, how are you helping your daughters when every night when the lights go on, you need them home because your street isn't safe? How are you helping your daughters when the school that they go to has a 52 % graduation rate?

29:42You want to help your daughters make sure that you are growing up in a strong and in a supportive and in a loving community. You want to help that community, make sure that community is surrounded by other communities that are just as strong and just as supportive. The best way for us to help ourselves is to help others. Yeah. What do you think is America's greatest wound? I think America's greatest wound is low expectations. I think that we just have different expectations for different people depending on where they're from, what they look like, who their parents were, what community they're in.

30:17And I remember once talking with Wes about Baltimore. The other Wes. The other, sorry, the other Wes Moore. The other Wes Moore. Yeah, not, the other Wes Moore. And I remember asking him and saying, so do you think that we're products of our environments? Because I'd heard that so many times when I was growing up. And Wes looked back at me and he said, actually, I think we're products of our expectations. Well, I think so too. And I thought he is absolutely right. And someone once said to me, it's a real shame that you lived up to your expectations and Wes didn't. And I said, actually, the real shame is that we both did.

30:49So the expectations and the unfortunately chronically low expectations that we have for so many people in our society, I think is our country's greatest wound. You don't fix that, then everything becomes more challenging. Yeah. What does the current political climate represent for us spiritually? Mm. It represents our absolute downfall if we're not careful. You know, there's in a movie, The American President, there's a great line where they say, people tell you to be afraid of it and they tell you who's to blame for it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. And I think we're seeing that play itself out every two and four years where people are telling you to be afraid of it.

31:37And then they're pointing the finger and tell you and that's the person, that's the group, that's the blame for it. Yeah. Because you just have to get someone to pull a lever for you and they can move on. Um, if we underappreciate the humanity that's existing behind these groups and the humanity that's existing behind these decisions, uh, I think we're always going to make decisions that are based on fear and decisions that are never based on actually getting to our greater glory. Finish this sentence. I feel the presence of God when? I open my eyes. I feel God everywhere, and I feel God in everything.

32:13I know God loves me because he's given me more moments. So I feel God in everything that I do, good and bad, because he continues to remind me of his glory and his strength. I experience love when? When I'm doing my work. I experience love when I know that I'm doing something that God wants me to do. And when I say my work, it's not necessarily, again, my occupation. It could be the time I'm with my family, the time having a wonderful conversation, the time when it's just my wife and I having dinner. I experience love when I know that my greatest joy is fulfilling what that world's need is at that moment.

32:56That's when I experience love. The purpose of forgiveness is? Is to reestablish our humanity. My life force is most fulfilled when? In prayer. In prayer. My life force is most fulfilled when I'm in prayer because I'm not allowing all the other stuff around me to distract me. That's when I'm at my purest strength. Mm. The purpose of your soul is? To share. Mm-hmm. The purpose of our soul is to give back to the world just a sliver of what the world has given to you. Mm. because we know the importance of souls when it comes to actually saving others and fulfilling God's will here. How do you define spirituality versus religion?

33:52I feel like, for me, religion is the act of going and celebrating and worshiping in a collective. For me, religion is about, it's the body and it's the embodiment. For me, spirituality is the every being that exists within you, where you know where even if I'm not in a religious house, I can still be very spiritual because I know that no matter where I am, that that place is where I'm intended to actually be. So what would you say is a word that best describes you and who you are and why you're here? committed committed oh that's good what inspires you you know I um I think a lot about my grandfather where uh he was who gave you the bible the one who gave me the bible okay he uh was born in this country and when he was a just young four years old uh the ku klux klan ran his family my family out of this country.

35:02And my grandfather always had a goal and a mission of coming back to the United States, which eventually, in 1950, he did. And he came and he became the first black minister in the history of the Dutch Form Church. He was a person who was completely unafraid. And when we moved to the Bronx, where the same house that he raised kids in, the same house that they raised us in, that was not a good neighborhood. and even when my mom moved back down to Maryland, was in Baltimore, she's like, come on down here. They're like, we're not moving. We're committed to this community. We're committed to this environment and I feel like my commitment is a direct descendant of him.

35:48Wow. And right before I left for Afghanistan, he gave me one of those little New Testament pocket Bibles, you know, the green covers and in his handwriting, 87 year old handwriting at that point, he just wrote, have faith, not fear. I carried that Bible in my flak vest. And I remember before going on every single mission, I would repeat those words, have faith, not fear, have faith, not fear, have faith, not fear. And I still do it to this day. Before I go do anything, something seems scary. Have faith, not fear. I am convinced that his words carried me in my unit through Afghanistan. I'm convinced that his words carried me through my time now because if we're living in a sense of fear, if we let fear drive our decisions, then we're never ever going to be able to be able to see true joy.

36:40And I think that was the point that he was making. He's saying if you have faith and you have God on your side then what else do you need? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. God bless you. That's as good as it gets. That is a super soul on steroids. That's as good as it gets, okay? I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.