The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose(20)

Most people wait to assess their legacy until their second or third act of life, when there is time to sit back and reflect. But what if, right now, you began to structure your decisions based on how you want to be remembered, rather than on what you believe you still need to accomplish? What I’m suggesting is that you don’t wait until you’re sitting on your porch in your rocking chair to evaluate the character of your actions. Ask yourself today, in the middle of your complicated, demanding, chaotic life: What do I want my legacy to be? And then start living from that intention.

As Maya always said: When you know, teach. When you get, give.

—Oprah





BRYAN STEVENSON


Often we measure how we’re doing in life by how much money we make or how many people know our name, and all these other kinds of metrics. I think there’s another way of measuring how you’re doing: by how many stones you catch. By how often you actually position yourself to help those who need help. There’s something redemptive, powerful, and transformative about catching the stones that people throw at each other unfairly. We run from problems, most of us. But sometimes we have to run to the problem.





GLORIA STEINEM


If you are in a place where you’re more powerful than the people around you, listen as much as you talk. And if you’re less powerful, talk as much as you listen.





THICH NHAT HANH


Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of the other person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: Help him or her to empty their heart. Remember that you are helping him or her to suffer less, and even if they say things full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. If you want to help them correct their perception, you wait for another time; at this time, you just listen with compassion and help him or her to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.





U.S. Representative JOHN LEWIS


During the Freedom Rides, or during the sit-ins, during my civil-rights efforts in Mississippi, or working in Selma, I never ever thought about giving up and saying, This is too much. I never thought about dropping out. You come to that point where you’re saying, I’ve got to go on and see what the end’s going to be. You have to. You have to get out there and push and pull to try to make things better for a generation yet unborn. Each one of us has the ability to resist, not to be quiet. We have to be brave. We have to be bold. And sometimes you have to fight some of the old battles over and over again for the next generation. You too can make a contribution, and you must.





MARIANNE WILLIAMSON


OPRAH: I think what’s really important is to understand that in the making of history it’s not the majority of people. Everybody’s waiting on the majority to all agree that we need to move in a certain direction. But you say that is not the case.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON: The majority of people didn’t wake up one day and go, “Let’s free the slaves.” The majority of people didn’t wake up one day and say, “Let’s give women the right to vote.” It’s because a small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their day had a better idea. That’s how evolution works.





DEEPAK CHOPRA


There’s a body, there’s a mind, and there’s also a soul consciousness. When you get in touch with the soul consciousness, you become aware that other people also have a soul, and you communicate with that. Then you realize that you’re both part of a more divine realm, and that’s called “divine consciousness.” You can go even deeper into what is then called “unity consciousness,” where you realize that we are all inseparably one. All the separation is totally artificial.





CHARLES EISENSTEIN


CHARLES EISENSTEIN: We live in communities that aren’t really communities because we don’t know the people around us. We’re surrounded by strangers. So we feel lonely. Our sense of being in the world depends on our relationships. I’m talking about really being known. When we don’t know our neighbors and we’re not participating in the natural world in an intimate way, then we feel alone. We don’t even know who we are. There’s a deficit of identity when we’re shrunk down into these little separate selves.

OPRAH: Another word for suffering you use is separation, this feeling that you’re disconnected, even though you are in a room, or in a world where you are engaging with people all the time, but there’s this low-level sense of disconnection from community. That’s what you’re talking about. You say, “On some level, we all know better. This knowledge seldom finds clear articulation. So instead, we express it indirectly through covert and overt rebellion.” I found that so interesting. “Addiction. Self-sabotage. Procrastination. Laziness. Rage. Chronic fatigue. And depression. All are ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life that we are offered.” Well said, sir.

CHARLES: You are the mirror of all things. You are the totality of your relationships. So that means that anything that happens to anything, to any being, is happening to you on some level. It means that any difficult relationship you have is mirroring something in yourself. It means that everything you do to the world will somehow come back to you. It means the world outside of ourselves is not just a bunch of stuff. But it’s a mirror itself. It’s happening to you. Everything that’s happening to the world is happening to us. And whether or not we believe it, we can still feel it. That’s why it hurts so much. And we don’t even know why.