I'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.
Our next session is with a Rhodes Scholar, a White House fellow, and a best -selling author.
I first met Wes Moore seven years ago on The Oprah Show.
I met so many people there.
I was so impressed by him through his intensely personal writings and so much of his other work.
Wes's work has shined an unflinching light on how environment and circumstance and personal will can shape the trajectory of our lives.
Wes's session is titled, The Difference Between Your Job and Your Work.
Blessings. Thank you.
Blessings. Thank you, guys.
Good morning. Thank you.
It is an absolute distinct honor to be here.
And this moment brings me back to a moment that happened years ago when I remember I was sitting on the New York subway, the train.
And for those of y 'all who know the New York subway, it's kind of like a sardine can, you know, where everybody packed in, right?
But this time it was actually really quiet.
And the reason it was really quiet was because it was around 10 .30 a night.
And so there weren't that many people on this train.
And it was 10 .30 at night and I was just coming back from my job that I just spent 14 .5 hours working at.
That job was on Wall Street.
That job was as an investment banker, right?
Where I'd just come on board and I was learning about all this stuff and learning about swaps and exotic derivatives and convertibles and I thought that was a car and it wasn't.
And I was so proud to have this opportunity to be there because it was a space and it was a place that everybody told me it was the absolute right place to be.
That everyone told me how proud they were that I was there.
When they said, you know, that's amazing that you're doing all that work and you're doing all that stuff, stuff that we didn't even really understand what it was.
And I remember once I had a conversation with my grandparents, my grandfather was a minister up in the South Bronx and my grandmother was a public school teacher for 28 years.
And I remember once I went to go see them and I'm eating all these Jamaican delicacies.
My grandfather was from Drake and my grandmother was born in Cuba, came from Jamaica, so we're eating like oxtail and ackee and saltfish, curry goat, right?
And I'm eating all this stuff and my grandfather kind of says to me in between my bites and he says, so what exactly do you do?
And my grandmother kind of saved me and she stopped and she said, dear, you know he's a banker?
And then she says, in fact, I want to go tell Ms.
Johnson to go do her checks with him.
Ms. Johnson was their 80 -year -old next door neighbor.
Ms. Johnson and the checks that my grandmother was talking about was Ms.
Johnson's Social Security checks.
My grandmother didn't understand that if Ms.
Johnson handed me her check, I wouldn't even know what to do with it.
My grandmother didn't understand that if Ms.
Johnson came down to my office to hand me her check, security wouldn't have let her into the building.
That was my reality.
This place that everyone was so proud of me being there because it was just so different and so foreign and so exciting from anything they had known before, and especially why that matters, is having an understanding about where I came from and how far I came, how far I'd come.
Exactly 13 .2 miles.
Because 13 .2 miles from my office down on Wall Street was the neighborhood in the Bronx that I spent much of my childhood in.
13 .2 miles from my office down on Wall Street was a community that was chronically underinvested in.
And the shame about it is for everybody who came up in that community, we knew it.
13 .2 miles from that office was a place in a space where this idea of hope and this idea of expectations completely paralleled one another.
And it's a place that I began to realize that we, all of us from our communities, that we are not products of our environments, but that we are products of our expectations.
And that the expectations that we all have of ourselves don't come from nowhere.
They come from the expectations that other people have of us, and we internalize them and we make them our own.
13 .2 miles from my office was a place where at 11 years old, where I first felt handcuffs in my wrist.
So you all have to understand, you know, I love my mama more than words can even explain.
My mother raised three kids on her own.
She's actually here today, and I praise God for her.
I really do. And I think, in fact, my little sister who I think is my beautiful sister who I think said it best, where she said, our mother wore sweaters so we could wear coats.
My mother sacrificed everything for her kids.
But even my mother couldn't keep us away from this reality of what we knew.
And so when I had this chance now to go work, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and everyone was saying, man, you have an opportunity to go to Wall Street?
Son. Take that. You have a chance to go do all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, wow, it's a great opportunity because, you know, they were going to pay me a lot of money, and I could work with really smart people and they'd pay me a lot of money.
And I remember at 10 .30 that night feeling like for so long I felt like I was in a place and I was in a space, that it wasn't like I didn't belong because I felt like, you know, oh, I don't belong in this environment because frankly one thing I believe deeply and believe in with all certainty is the fact
that I am never in a room that I don't belong in.
I'm not in, no room that I'm in, am I there because of someone's benevolence or because of someone's social experiment?
I'm in that room because I belong there, right?
But I felt like I was in my place not because this was a place that I didn't belong in for whatever reason.
It was a place that I felt like I wasn't being fed by the environment that I was in.
10 .30 at night and I'm listening to my, this is how back in the day it is, I was listening to my iPod.
Right? And you all remember how the iPod used to go where you just had that little circle and you used to swill it around?
Right? And you had that feature on the iPod that was called Random and it would just play random songs.
And I had like 2 ,000 songs on it so every once in a while you would just hear songs that you hadn't heard in a very long time.
Right? And I heard this song that I hadn't heard in, it felt like years and it was by a woman by the name of Lauren Hill.
And so for those who don't know, Lauren Hill is a hip hop, R &B artist.
She put together this album called The Miseducation of Lauren Hill which, I mean I swear you can just literally just sit down and push play and let the whole thing rot.
Right? That's how powerful this album was.
And I'm listening to this album and it was number 15 on her album.
Right? Things are title track but it was number 15.
And then there's a scratchy record that comes on like she wants it to feel old school.
And then out of nowhere her beautiful, beautiful voice comes over the record.
I felt like at that moment Lauren was singing to me.
Like she was my first celebrity crush, right?
And I'm laying on the couch and Lauren's talking to me.
Where I felt like I found myself so often trying to find my peace in my business card.
I felt myself trying to find my peace in the fact that when I met people and they asked me what I did, that hopefully the answer that I could give them was something that was interesting enough for them to continue the conversation instead of forgetting my name 30 seconds later.
I found myself in a place where I was being called a task where I was actually valuing my worth by my employer.
And every time I tried to be what someone else thought of me, so caught up I wasn't able to achieve.
But deep in my heart the answer it wasn't me so I made up my mind to define my own destiny.
David Graber is an anthropologist and he's an activist and he once made a statement where he said huge swaths of our world are currently working in jobs that they secretly believe should not even exist.
The moral pain of that reality is severe.
A scar across our collective soul.
Where I find myself trying to find my value in my job what I didn't understand was I needed to find my value in my work.
And there is a difference because a job was my occupation, my work was when my greatest passions began to start overlapping with the world's greatest needs.
And I chose to do something about it.
I chose to start going through the process of finding my work.
And so the work that we do now is very much a reaction to that process.
The work we do now is very much a reaction to that journey because one thing I believe about the work that we do is that the work that we do is not something, that's not a conclusion.
Our work is our journey.
Our work is the process of understanding why were we here and how do we then fulfill that lane and fulfill that purpose to making meaningful and worthwhile that we were ever here in the first place.
And so I then started going through the process and started studying and understanding and I started realizing that actually going and finding my work really came down to three different things.
Every time I wanted to find my work I had to go to the ICU.
All right, not the intensive care unit.
First thing I had to do was identify, then I had to calcify and then I had to unify.
I had to go through my ICU to find my work.
First identify, identify the fact that your work is not someone else's work.
Someone could give you the most impassioned speech about why this thing is really important to them, but if it's not something that makes your heart beat a little bit faster, it's not your work.
You know, I have people, whether it is, you know, veterans' issues or whether it is reforming the criminal justice system or whether your issue is education or youth or seniors or the environments, whatever it is, the identification of your work becomes a very personal process.
I have people who come up to me, it's like, Wes, listen, I could really use your help.
Can you help me advocate for the Eastern Bay Owl?
I'm like, yo, listen, the Eastern Bay Owl needs help.
And much respect for you for believing in the Eastern Bay Owl.
I think that's a beautiful thing.
It's not my work. I wish you the best of luck.
It's just not my work.
The identification of that thing that makes your heart beat just a little bit faster, and understanding that your work is a very personal process.
It's not about the issue of the day.
It's the issue of your life.
Calcify. That the goal is not to start something.
The goal is to end something.
Oftentimes when people come up to me and they're like, you know, listen, Wes, you know, I'm thinking about starting a nonprofit organization.
The very first piece of advice I give them is don't start a nonprofit organization yet.
All right. Understand what's out there.
Really do your homework and your diligence to figure out what's going on.
Here's the truth. There are currently over 40 ,000 organizations in this country right now that serve veterans.
What we call VSOs, Veterans Serving Organizations.
Over 40 ,000 organizations in this country call themselves VSOs.
I can tell you right now as a person who works very actively on these issues, there are not 40 ,000 issues that veterans face.
But we have 40 ,000 VSOs who are all working to help this cause.
My point is this. Your goal should never be to start something.
Your goal should be to end it.
And sometimes that doesn't necessarily mean founding something.
Sometimes that's something pulling something together.
Because the truth is I know people who bring their work to their job every single day.
I think of my man Derek who's a barber over in West Baltimore who came up in one of the toughest areas in West Baltimore who now still has his business in one of the toughest areas in West Baltimore.
Now his job is that he's a barber.
His work is that he is passionate about education, particularly for young boys and particularly for young boys of color.
So when they come into his barbershop and it's all known throughout the community, if you come into Mr.
Derek's barbershop and you bring a book, you're going to get a free cut.
I think about people like Yolanda who her job, she's a makeup artist and she's a beautiful makeup artist, but her work is helping women who are victims of domestic abuse.
And what she does is she takes her talents and she takes her gifts and she will not just physically help, but also morally and spiritually help women who at that time and at that moment might be at the lowest points of their lives and remind them of just how beautiful and worthy they are when someone
else tried to rob that from them.
I think about women like Lisa who works as a corporate attorney, but her work are veterans.
And so she goes around her office and goes to all the big corporate lawyers who have suits that they probably hadn't worn in years and she goes and collects suits, shirts, belts, ties, et cetera, and then she gives them and works with an organization that are making sure that as veterans are transitioning
out and going to look for jobs that they can come out and look the part when they're going for their job interviews.
That this is not about starting something, but it's about ending something.
And the third thing that you is unify this idea that the people who you are trying to help make sure that they are part of the conversation and not just subjects of the conversation.
You know, I remember once working with a university who was talking about all the things they are going to do inside the community that they call home and they were like, you know, we have all these people who are working on our advisory committee and they started putting all these names and they have, and we
have the foremost experts in urban development, doctors so and so and so and so.
And I said, man, that sounds great.
And I said, how many people from the community do you have on your working group?
And they kind of looked at each other and they were like, well, we have doctors so and so to...
If you're not making sure that other people are involved in that conversation, particularly the people where your work overlaps and your work aligns, your altruism will be seen as something else.
Your altruism will be seen as paternalism.
We know that when we go through this process of the identification of our work, it comes with a space and it comes with an urgency.
You know, when I was coming up and I was sent off to military school, my mother thought that was a good idea for some reason.
It was, mama. And I remember we had this colonel there, a guy named Colonel Billy G Murphy, who was a three -time Vietnam veteran and he was our common honor cadets and this dude was as tough as nails.
My plea brothers and I said, last, I think we only saw him smile once and I think it was an accident when we saw him smile, but we loved him because he loved us.
But one day he called the entire Corps of Cadets together for evening formation, which was weird, but it was eight o 'clock at night on a Sunday night and we had noticed that he was losing weight really quickly.
In fact, the uniform that he was wearing, it was starting to fit so big that it actually started to even look like it was his father's uniform or something.
And he called the entire Corps of Cadets together and we were all sitting inside the pews and he was standing up in the pulpit and he got up in the pulpit and he told us that he was diagnosed with cancer and that he had to leave the school.
So this in essence was his farewell address.
But he said something to us that day that I will never forget.
He just looked over us and he said, when it's time for you to leave here, whether it's time for you to leave this school, whether it's time for you to leave your job, whether it's time for you to leave your neighborhood, or when it's time for you to leave this planet, make sure that it mattered that you were ever
even here. Make sure that it mattered that you were ever even here because none of us have promised anything.
We're not promised more days or more weeks or more years.
No one has ever tapped me in the shoulder and was like, you know what Wes, you've got 6 ,515 days left so you can pace yourself.
When you see people like, yeah I'm gonna get to that once I get promoted.
I'm gonna get to that once I get tenure.
I'm gonna get to that once I retire.
I'm gonna get to that once my kids move out.
Who has promised you anything?
So the only thing that we know is that while we're here, let's actually do something with it.
That while we're here, let's love.
And let's love a little harder.
While we're here, let's push and let's push a little faster.
While we're here, let's give and let's give a little more.
And while we're here, let's get to our work.
Bless you guys, and thank you so much.
I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
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