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I'd like to tell you a story.

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It's about a little boy

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who grew up in Sweden, 
in the '60s and '70s.

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His dad was this tall,
good-looking army officer.

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His mom was this pretty but shy linguist.

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He had a brother and two sisters,
and they lived in suburb of Stockholm.

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And that little boy was me.

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I think I remember
the first time my dad hit me.

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I was around three or four, I think.

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I was walking in front of the TV
and he kicked me,

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and I flew into some bookshelves.

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And I remember there was blood
and my mom was screaming.

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You see, my dad had a lot of problems
and he took it out on me and my mom.

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He never touched my brothers or sisters.

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And this started
when I was about three or four

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and went on till I was about 11 or 12.

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It was a really hard part of my life

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because I had to go to school
with a black eye or, you know,

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some of my hair was missing
because he'd been yanking my head.

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I think some of you may know
what I'm talking about.

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I understand how you're feeling.

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You see, when you get abused at home,

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you have two choices, 
just like and animal: fight or flight.

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You can either run away,

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which was impossible for me
because I was a little kid living at home;

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or you can fight back,

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which I couldn't do because,
you know, I was just a little kid.

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My dad was my size.

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But I learned later 
there's a third choice:

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you freeze.

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It's like a gazelle being taken by a lion.

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You just freeze and go dead;
all your emotions are bottled up inside.

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I would just [lie] there.

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When he was hitting me,
I wouldn't even cry.

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And, by the time I was 11 or 12,
I was smoking, I was drinking,

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I was running away from home
on stolen motorcycles,

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sleeping over in someone's garage,

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but my dad always found me.

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Back home for another beating.

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So, my grades at school were terrible,

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and my dad said, 
"I've got to do something.

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I've got get rid of this kid somehow
and get him out of here."

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So, he decided to send me up north,
to his parents', my grandparents'.

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And they lived in a small town
in the northern part of Sweden.

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Now, Sweden is a country pretty far north.

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I mean, Stockholm in the winter
gets dark at 2:30 p.m..

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Stockholm was like Miami Beach,
compared to the place I was being sent.

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But my grandparents were quite nice to me,

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and they took care of me
and my grades got better.

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I discovered ice hockey,
and then weight training, and karate,

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and I started to heal.

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And, by the time I was about 17 or 18,
I remembered something my dad had told me.

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Because, you know,
my dad was this pretty smart guy,

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he was very charming, he was a nice guy -

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most of the time,
when he wasn't going nuts.

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And he told me, "Listen -

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Listen, kid, this socialistic country,
forget it, you can't do anything here.

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If you want to be somebody,
you've got to go to America."

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I always remembered that.

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So, I kind of got all the scholarships
I could because I didn't have any money.

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I got a scholarship to WSU,
Washington State University;

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another one to Clemson.

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Finally, I got a
Fulbright sholarship to MIT,

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which is the reason I am standing here.

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And there was just one little snag -

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because, my forth year
to my last year as a master's,

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I was in Sydney,
at the University of Sydney,

68
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and I was studying engineering
on a scholarship,

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and I was working extra as a bouncer

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because, you know,
that trauma is really helpful

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when you get into a ring with somebody.

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So, I became a pretty good fighter.

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I was a karate champion and I had
what you call a "killer instinct."

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So, me and my buddy
who was my sparring partner

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got hired to do some special work
at a rock concert, different artists,

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and one of them was
this beautiful black singer,

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a statuesque lady named Grace Jones.

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We worked there and, afterwards,

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she hired some of us to do
especial security at her party

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when she was going to go out
and hang out at the nightclubs in Sydney.

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I didn't really realize right away why
she'd picked this tall, blond, buff guy

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to be her special security.

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But, you know, I found out
later that evening.

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(Laughter)

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I, uh -

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(Laughter)

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I ended up in a hotel room,

88
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missed a few classes
the next day, college -

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And, you know, 
she was a world-class artist,

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totally out of my league.

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That's what I thought,
but she didn't agree, you know.

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So, we ended up having this relationship.

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I went to Tokyo to do some karate,
she was there doing a commercial.

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Then I ended up moving to New York.

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So, I had a couple of months
before I was going to start at MIT,

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and those months literally changed my life
because my what happened was -

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This was New York city, Studio 64 -

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I met David Bowie, Michael Jackson.

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First week I was there,
I went to some party.

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There was a little guy with white hair.

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He came up to me and said,
"Hi! What are you famous for?"

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He took a picture of me and I'm like,
"Nothing, as far as I know."

103
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And he goes, "Hey, I want
to put you on my magazine."

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Well, that was Andy Worhol,
Interview Magazine.

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So, finally, when it was time to go back
to school, to Cambridge, MIT,

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chemical engineering just didn't seem
as exciting, somehow.

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(Laughter)

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So -

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But, anyway, I picked this big black
motorcycle I had bought, 1200CC,

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threw Grace on the back,
all decked out in leather.

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I got in my leather pants,

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I didn't wear a shirt
too often in those days.

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I drove up to Cambridge,

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and I think the professors at MIT
had a slightly different idea

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of who this Swedish star student was -

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(Laughter)

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So, when this thing just - "vroom" -
went past a window,

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I think they were
sort of shocked, you know.

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They expected somebody else,
slightly smaller,

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maybe with some Coke-bottle
glasses or something,

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but, anyway, they were as shocked
as I was not belonging there.

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I felt that right away,
and three weeks later I was gone.

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I went back to New York,

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got an agent - so all other actors -

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started studying, acting,
got up for a couple of movies.

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One was a "boxing" movie.

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It turned out to be Rocky IV,
and I auditioned for it.

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Finally, I got the role, moved out here.

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I was training with Sly Stallone
down here, about a mile away from here.

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And the film was shot and opened
30 years ago, Memorial Day.

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And I came out of the theater with Grace
and people were taking pictures of me,

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and I'm like, "What happened?
Oh, I guess I'm a movie star. OK, great."

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But, you know, the problem was this:
my troubles had only started,

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because what happened
was that frozen part of me -

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remember that I told you? -

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started coming out
and kind of running my life.

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Because what happens is this:
when you have this trauma,

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it's like a soldier
with post-traumatic stress.

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You end up acting on something
called escape behavior.

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You try to escape from something
you can't escape from

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because it's inside of you:

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drinking, sexual affairs,
overeating, violence, you name it.

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I did a lot of bad things to myself,

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and, 25 years later, 40 movies later,

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yeah, I was a movie star,
but I was miserable most of the time.

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I had a failed marriage,

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two daughters who I loved,
but they didn't even know me.

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My career was kind of rock-bottom.

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This was only five years ago,

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and I didn't know how to get out of it.

151
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Two things happened.

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I got a call from
my old buddy Sly Stallone,

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"Hey, Dolph, how are you doing?"

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(Laughter)

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"I've got this script, so check it out,
see what you think."

156
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Well, the script was called
The Expendables.

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It was a big hit, I was back
in the big screen after 15 years.

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The other thing is I met this girl,
fell in love with her,

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and I knew I was going to embark
on the same stupid path

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I'd been down before.

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Actually, something happened.

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Some girl was flirting with me,
I gave her my number -

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The usual: the text,
the pictures; she saw it -

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A few of you may have been there.

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She went nuts, we were about to break up,

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and I said, "I can't do this.
I've got to change my life somehow."

167
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She'd told me before,
"Why don't you try therapy?"

168
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I was like, "Forget about it.
It's for sissies."

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"What about meditation?"

170
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"Ah, do I look like an Indian guru?
I don't think so."

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(Laughter)

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So, to make a long story short,

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I took up therapy
three years ago, meditation,

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and it totally changed my life.

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Suddenly, this fog
that I was living in lifted.

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I did the therapy
where you go back in time,

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you relive your experiences, you cry,
scream, you roll up in a little ball,

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you hit the couch
with a baseball bat, you know,

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anything you've got to do
to start to attack this part of you,

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this frozen part of me
that was running my life.

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And slowly it started to become
smaller and smaller,

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and I could sort of see my life
come back to me.

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And the meditation helped as well.

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So, the first thing I did:

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I went back to see my kids,

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and I asked them for forgiveness
for what I had done

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because I told them
what happened with my dad,

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and I was a guy who
didn't like what I'd done,

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and they started crying right away.

190
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And I realized they had had a lot of pain,
and I cried with them.

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I did the same with my ex-wife,

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and a few other people I had hurt.

193
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And, as a matter of fact,
I also, in my head, forgave my dad

194
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for what he did,

195
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and my mom, for what she didn't do.

196
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And I started embarking on this new life.

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It was like a fight worth fighting,
to come to terms with yourself,

198
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to heal yourself.

199
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But what I didn't realize
was there's another level to that,

200
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because, once you start
healing yourself and feel better,

201
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you see other people around you
who need help, who have pain.

202
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And faith kind of came to me,

203
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and I wrote and produce a movie
about human trafficking,

204
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called Skin Trade.

205
00:10:53,513 --> 00:10:57,694
And I learned about human trafficking,
which is a terrible crime.

206
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There are 20 million slaves
in the world today.

207
00:11:00,725 --> 00:11:05,213
It's a 20-billion-dollar industry,
second largest in the world.

208
00:11:05,213 --> 00:11:09,865
These people are physically humiliated,
psychologically abused.

209
00:11:09,865 --> 00:11:13,494
They have no self worth,
sort of like how I used to feel.

210
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And kind of faith brought me
in contact with this,

211
00:11:16,316 --> 00:11:18,802
with human trafficking and these victims.

212
00:11:18,802 --> 00:11:22,757
When I came back to LA,
I called an organization called CAST,

213
00:11:22,757 --> 00:11:24,676
and asked them if I could help -

214
00:11:24,676 --> 00:11:28,155
Coalition to Abolish
Slavery and Trafficking.

215
00:11:28,155 --> 00:11:30,343
Well, I've been helping them ever since,

216
00:11:30,343 --> 00:11:34,117
and it's a great feeling for me
to finally give something back.

217
00:11:34,117 --> 00:11:36,086
You know, a lot of this human trafficking

218
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isn't just happening in, like, India,
and Africa, and over there.

219
00:11:39,627 --> 00:11:42,513
As a matter of fact,
one of the most interesting cases

220
00:11:42,513 --> 00:11:45,956
was a girl that was brought over
from a Third World country

221
00:11:45,956 --> 00:11:48,035
by a very wealthy family.

222
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She was kept in a house,
they took her passport,

223
00:11:50,693 --> 00:11:53,566
kept on the guard all the time,
threatened her with violence,

224
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threatened her family.

225
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You know where the house was?

226
00:11:57,856 --> 00:12:00,667
In Brentwood, right here,

227
00:12:00,667 --> 00:12:02,538
about a mile from here.

228
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And she didn't know what to do.

229
00:12:05,097 --> 00:12:08,241
They brought this American nanny in
to take care of the little kid,

230
00:12:08,241 --> 00:12:11,067
and they talked, and the American
nanny said she'd help her,

231
00:12:11,067 --> 00:12:15,158
but nothing happened,
a week passed, a month passed -

232
00:12:15,158 --> 00:12:17,968
Finally, they were coming back
from the park one day.

233
00:12:17,968 --> 00:12:21,518
She was taking care of this kid,
and there was this security guy as usual,

234
00:12:23,158 --> 00:12:27,618
and there were 15 FBI agents
outside of the house.

235
00:12:28,338 --> 00:12:29,868
They took her inside and said,

236
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"Do you want to stay
or do you want to leave?"

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She said, "I want to leave."

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CAST got her into a shelter,
re-educated her, brought her back.

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She learned a job.

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She finally ended up 
getting a green card.

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As a matter of fact,

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she met this man from her home country,
that she fell in love with,

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and they got married.

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And to be part of something
like that is just amazing.

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As a matter of fact, Alice is also
pregnant with her new baby,

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and towards the end of my talk,
I wanted to say hi to Alice.

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Please stand up.

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(Applause)

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Anyway,

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I guess, for me, the experience
that I told you about is -

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like, you have to come
to terms with yourself.

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You have to love yourself so you can
appreciate those things in others.

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If you heal yourself, you can heal others.

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00:13:35,944 --> 00:13:37,266
And -

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00:13:37,817 --> 00:13:42,150
I think if you take time
to look inside and find that little boy,

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that little girl, inside yourself -

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then, you treat them well -

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and are you ready to look

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00:13:52,187 --> 00:13:55,678
and see a little boy or a little girl next
to you that may need some help?

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Because, if you do that,

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it's just

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the greatest feeling in the world.

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Thanks.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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00:14:20,568 --> 00:14:22,383
(Applause)