The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose(4)

I used this curiosity to meet new people in subjects that I would have never learned anything about. And by meeting these new people, it’s given life to movies and television shows that I’ve done. It’s helped me in my personal life with my children. It’s been a powerful force in my life.





LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA


My parents both worked really hard. I have never known either of my parents to have just one job. They always had many jobs at once. And they worked so that my sister and I could have the things we wanted. I grew up aware of that. But I also grew up in a house where they were not around for the nine-to-five. We all ate dinner sort of at our own speed. I ate dinner when I got home. Sort of every person for himself.

They were there for the important stuff. They never missed a play. They were very present. But they weren’t around. And so I had this enormously rich, imaginative life as my social media followers will see because there are hours of VHS videos and movies on there that I made growing up.





ELLEN DEGENERES


It was very clear to me that I saw things that other people didn’t see. And I saw things that weren’t valued, understood, or paid attention to. And that’s why I became a comedian. Because I noticed the little spaces between the things that everybody else paid attention to. I paid attention to the stuff in between.





TRACY MORGAN


OPRAH: When did you know that comedy was the way out for you?

TRACY MORGAN: My dad was funny. He was Richard Pryor funny. He was so funny, I didn’t really stay around my friends. I hung out with my dad and his friends. Because the conversations between his friends and him were more stimulating. I couldn’t learn from my friends. They knew what I knew. But I could learn from my father and his friends. I remember when he came to the projects, everybody came out because Jimmy’s here. And I remember him sitting me on his lap at four. He’d say to me, “Say, ‘Your mother is…’” this and that. And I’d repeat back, “Your mother…” And everybody started laughing. And I liked that. And that’s how far back it went. It was my dad.





Sister JOAN CHITTISTER


OPRAH: I’ve never quite met anybody who knew at three years old, standing looking in a casket, that being a nun was their calling. Can you tell me how you knew that?

SISTER JOAN CHITTISTER: My father had died. He was twenty-three. My mother was a twenty-one-year-old widow with this little baby. Two and a half or so. And she dressed me to take me to the funeral parlor. Her brothers and sisters said, “You cannot take that child to a funeral parlor.” But my mother said, “Her father died. She has to grieve like we do. She’s going.”

So she’s holding me in front of the casket. I’ve got my little hands around her head. I can feel the tears. Her face is wet. I know something terrible has happened, but more so, I’m looking over her shoulder at the end of the casket. I say, “Mama, what are those two things? What are those things? There, at the end.” And my mother hugs me a little and she says, “Honey, those are the sisters. They are special friends of Daddy’s and special friends of God’s. They taught your daddy in high school. And they’re going to stay here tonight. And when God comes for Daddy’s soul, they’re going to say, ‘This is Joan’s daddy, and he’s very good. Take him straight to God.’”

And I said to myself, I want to be one of those. I thought that was the best job in the world. You just sit around waiting and angels come. And I spent the rest of my life racing across streets to say hello to nuns. “Hi, Sister. Hi, Sister.” I went to a Catholic school and I was not disappointed. Those sisters were loving. They were smart. They were competent. And they became a model of womanhood for me. A long time before there was any language for it.





Reverend ED BACON


When I was five I was playing alone in a pine grove in south Georgia. And all of a sudden, I felt enveloped by warmth and light. And I heard, inaudibly in the deepest part of myself, You are the most beloved creature in all of creation. At the same time I got that message, I also heard, And every other person is the most beloved creature in all of creation. It is that experience of unconditional love that has so overwhelmed me and made my life what it is today.





RUPAUL CHARLES


OPRAH: I knew that you were my kind of human when I first heard you say that we’re all born naked and the rest is just drag. I have a different way of saying that idea, but I mean the same thing. We’re all in these body suits and come up with these definitions and ideas about who we are. My favorite quote is from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who says, We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

RUPAUL CHARLES: That’s exactly right. I got that as a young kid, and I thought, Is everybody getting that this is all kind of an illusion?

OPRAH: Do you remember the first time you thought that?

RUPAUL: I remember when my parents were in the living room going crazy, you know, beating each other, and I knew this couldn’t be right. But when I was about eleven years old, I found my tribe in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I thought, Okay, they get it. They’re irreverent. They’re not taking anything seriously, and they’re having fun. That’s what this is all about. I got it very early. My sisters also. You know, we laugh. That was our sanctuary. It was a place where could find some peace. I like the lighter things in life. I tend to go toward the light.