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00:00:16,513 --> 00:00:19,623
You may have noticed by now

2
00:00:19,623 --> 00:00:21,714
that I'm really fat.

3
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And that's okay;

4
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you wouldn't be the first.

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Back in 1997, when I was in seventh grade,

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I heard a question posed about me
in the locker room of my middle school.

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I sat hidden in a bathroom stall,

8
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hunched over, not wanting
to give myself away,

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when I heard a girl ask,

10
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"When was the last time
Whitney saw 90210?"

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I was like more of
a Saved by the Bell girl myself,

12
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and I'd actually never seen
an episode of 90210.

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So I clenched my muscles and held my pee

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and waited with bated breath
for the answer.

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And when it came -

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"When she stepped on the scale" -

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the girls erupted into laughter,

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and I felt the familiar sting
of embarrassment seeping into my cheeks.

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It took me back to my fifth-grade year,
on the soccer field,

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where the boys had taken to singing
a song about me called "Baby Beluga"

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that ended with
"She's got a whale of a tail."

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You might be picturing now
how fat I probably was.

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It's easy to conjure up a mental image

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of an awkward girl
spilling out of her shorts,

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running up and down the sidelines
like, "Hey, I'm open!"

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But if you have that mental image,

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you would be wrong.

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Because in 1995, when I was 10 years old,

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I looked like this.

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When I look at that picture now,

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my heart aches

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because when I was just
becoming aware that I had a body

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and that other people
had opinions about my body,

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I became a statistic

35
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like eight out of ten 10-year-olds
who, today, are afraid of being fat.

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10-year-olds!

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That's a real statistic.

38
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I bought the lie that diet culture
sold me when I was 10 years old

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that told me if I am thin,
thinner, thin enough,

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then I will be happy.

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But at 10 years old,
I felt the furthest thing from happy.

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And so the emotion that I most connected
with my body was shame.

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After that,

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shame followed me like a shadow.

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And after the 90210 incident,

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I knew I had to take action.

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So I grabbed the handle
of my father's toothbrush

48
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and shoved it down my throat
until I vomited.

49
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And thus began my nearly lifelong battle
with eating disorders.

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I continued to excel in school,
to play sports, to dance.

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Shame and I won
lots of awards and trophies.

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Sometimes, shame was like
a really overbearing adult

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begging for a piggyback ride.

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And other times,

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shame trailed a few feet behind me,
dragging its leash

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like a faithful dog
never leaving my sight.

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By the time I was 18 years old, in 2002,
and becoming a young woman,

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shame had solidified itself
as my most faithful friend.

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It accompanied me
to every dance performance,

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to every soccer tournament;

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it was even there in the bathroom
with me at my prom

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as I hunched over a toilet
and threw up my dinner

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just minutes before being
crowned prom princess.

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When I moved to college that fall,

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I brought shame along into my dorm room,

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and I noticed that my body was changing.

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By the time I went home
for Christmas break,

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I'd gained 50 pounds.

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And I'm thinking, like,

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"Okay, I'm an overachiever,

71
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so clearly the "freshman 15"
is just not enough.

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(Laughter)

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I was getting mysterious bruises
all over my body, and I was like,

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"Why am I bumping
into doorways and furniture?

75
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When did I get so clumsy?"

76
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But then I realized I wasn't clumsy:

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my body was expanding so quickly

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that I had lost all
kinesthetic awareness of it.

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My body literally didn't know
how to fit in its physical space anymore,

80
00:04:05,315 --> 00:04:08,895
and similarly, I didn't know
where I fit in the world.

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To say that my weight gain was difficult
would be an understatement.

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By the time the second
semester was finished,

83
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I'd gained nearly 100 pounds.

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There was the sympathy
from the pretty girls

85
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who asked me if I'd, like,
ever had a boyfriend.

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And there was that one frat boy

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who'd taken me
on a dinner date in August -

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granted, it was to Ruby Tuesday,
but it was a dinner date.

89
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And when he saw me in March,

90
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he looked right through me
like I didn't even exist.

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It was like I'd been forced into
some social experiment against my will,

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to put on a fat suit
and parade about in public.

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The differences in the way

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that people treated "average Whitney"
and "fat Whitney" were striking.

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Suddenly, I was assumed to be lazy,
desperate, sloppy, stupid.

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And with every single pound that I gained,

97
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my self-worth continued
to shrink further and further.

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So I became a different person after that.

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I quit my dance classes;

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I failed a lot of my academic classes;

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and in a world where it felt like
being a fat woman was the biggest taboo,

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I didn't have anyone to talk to.

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Sure, there were times
where I pulled myself up by the bootstraps

104
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and I said, "I'm going to go to the gym

105
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or I'm going to venture
out to this party."

106
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But there was always a whisper,
a dirty look, an insult

107
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to remind me why I didn't deserve
to be in those spaces.

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So I would come back home to my apartment

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to the only friend
that had never deserted me:

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shame.

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We would stay up late
into the night commiserating,

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getting drunk to numb our pain.

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I'd order takeout for us both

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and do anything to avoid going out
in a world that didn't want me.

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And of course, all the things
that I had done to cope

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only compounded the problem,

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and I continued gaining weight.

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In 2005, I weighed 280 pounds.

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And my nurse practitioner
swiveled her stool

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from in between my legs in the stirrups,


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checking her chart

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and announcing a little too cheerfully

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that she thought I had PCOS.

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Well!

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My mind started reeling

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because I did not remember
learning about this STD

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in my seventh-grade sex ed class.

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(Laughter)

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But the more I learned

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as I pored over the brochures
and the pamphlets -

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PCOS wasn't an STD.

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It was a syndrome,

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a grouping of symptoms with no cure

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that affects one out of every ten
women in America

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and is the leading cause of infertility.

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And then, like putting together a puzzle,
other stuff started to make sense.

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The handfuls of hair
that had come out in the shower,

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the coarse dark hairs all over my face,

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my period that had visited me only twice
when I was 15 and never again,

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and, of course,

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my sudden and severe weight gain
in my freshman year of college.

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I didn't have an explanation for it then,
but I had an explanation for it now:

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I was insulin resistant.

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So would life with PCOS
make it impossible to lose weight?

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Absolutely not.

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Would it be even harder?

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Absolutely yes.

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And for a woman who wanted
anything but to be fat,

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this felt like a death sentence.

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And then I got pissed off.

151
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I wondered,

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"Why have I never heard of this thing?"

153
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I wanted to know

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why I'd always been dismissed
when I went to the doctors,

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told that I was "young and irregular"
or I was drinking or I was on Prozac.

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But out of all those emotions that I felt,

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the one I felt the most of was shame.

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So after college,

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I packed two suitcases -

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my clothes and shame -

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and I set off for Korea to teach English.

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I got promotion after promotion,

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and I traveled the world.

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Shame and I made it all the way
to the top of the Great Wall of China;

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we ate sushi together in Tokyo;

166
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we vacationed in Malaysia and Vietnam;

167
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we even sunbathed in Bali.

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But all of these experiences
that should have been so wonderful

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were tinged with that
disgusting, insidious shame

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that sucked the life and the color
out of my memories

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and left me nothing but black and white

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and a never-ending wish to be thin
so that I could really start my life.

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Now, living abroad wasn't all bad -

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I had some of the best experiences there.

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But the discrimination I faced

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was so much more overt
than anything I'd had at home.

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I got laughed at, pointed at,
and called a pig every single day

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in the street, in the store,
in the nightclub.

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I'll never forget when I got in a taxi

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and the driver snorted
at me for every mile

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until we reached our destination.

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There was the guy that swerved his bicycle
dangerously close to me on the street,

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stopped pedaling,

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looked at me, said "pig,"

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and then spit.

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I chased him,

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which was a futile effort
because he was on a bike,

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and I hurled every Korean insult
that I could remember

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until I saw him vanish in the dark.

190
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And then I headed back
to my apartment to cry.

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00:09:10,584 --> 00:09:12,223
But it wasn't until ...

192
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I was assaulted in a bar -

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a man raced up behind me

194
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to start punching me
in the back of the head -

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that I realized,

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"Hold up.

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I don't deserve this."

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It took such an aggressive, abusive action

199
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to jolt me into the realization
that I was a fat human,

200
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but I was human.

201
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And I told myself,

202
00:09:36,600 --> 00:09:38,555
"I'm going to go back home to the States,

203
00:09:38,555 --> 00:09:41,865
and I'm going to prevent this
from ever happening to me again.

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I'm going to lose weight."

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00:09:44,575 --> 00:09:48,036
So I moved back home in 2011.

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00:09:51,006 --> 00:09:52,896
In 2011,

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00:09:52,896 --> 00:09:57,547
I weighed 329 pounds.

208
00:09:57,547 --> 00:10:00,917
And I lost 100 pounds in eight months.

209
00:10:00,917 --> 00:10:04,297
I worked out for 12
to 15 hours every week;

210
00:10:04,297 --> 00:10:05,667
I counted my calories;

211
00:10:05,667 --> 00:10:06,898
I obsessed;

212
00:10:06,898 --> 00:10:09,688
and I hid my shame
from my personal trainer

213
00:10:09,688 --> 00:10:11,918
and from my family and from my friends,

214
00:10:11,918 --> 00:10:13,998
even from strangers who said,

215
00:10:13,998 --> 00:10:15,849
"You're remarkable.

216
00:10:15,849 --> 00:10:18,459
This is the hardest thing
that anybody could ever do,

217
00:10:18,459 --> 00:10:19,868
and look at you doing it.

218
00:10:19,868 --> 00:10:23,901
I've never been more proud of you
since the day you were born!"

219
00:10:26,278 --> 00:10:31,519
Pretty soon, I was eating
500 to 1,000 calories a day,

220
00:10:31,519 --> 00:10:35,570
and I was throwing up everything
I ate on Friday, which was my "cheat day,"

221
00:10:35,570 --> 00:10:39,091
and my eating disorder
had returned in full force.

222
00:10:40,231 --> 00:10:43,701
One day, I walked out of the gym,
having run a few miles on the treadmill,

223
00:10:43,701 --> 00:10:47,131
and a car drove by slowly
and lowered the windows,

224
00:10:47,131 --> 00:10:48,811
and they yelled at me,

225
00:10:49,421 --> 00:10:50,722
"Fat ass!"

226
00:10:52,222 --> 00:10:55,392
When I climbed into my own car,
dripping with sweat,

227
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what happened next was nothing
short of a nervous breakdown.

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I had literally been working my ass off

229
00:11:00,173 --> 00:11:03,262
to do the one thing
that everybody told me would fix it,

230
00:11:03,262 --> 00:11:06,942
the one thing that everybody told me
would make me worthy.

231
00:11:06,942 --> 00:11:08,993
But that guy in
the parking lot didn't care;

232
00:11:08,993 --> 00:11:12,763
he didn't know who, why, where I was
or what I had done to change.

233
00:11:12,763 --> 00:11:15,674
And I fantasized about losing
the rest of my hundred pounds

234
00:11:15,674 --> 00:11:17,294
and thinking about my goal weight.

235
00:11:17,294 --> 00:11:20,735
But then all I could see
were sagging breasts and loose skin

236
00:11:20,735 --> 00:11:23,335
and crow's feet around my eyes.

237
00:11:23,335 --> 00:11:24,625
And I knew, intellectually,

238
00:11:24,625 --> 00:11:28,932
that as long as I let my self-worth
be determined in the eyes of others,

239
00:11:28,932 --> 00:11:31,174
I would never be content.

240
00:11:31,174 --> 00:11:36,756
But I could not disengage from the belief
that I had to be thin to be happy.

241
00:11:36,756 --> 00:11:41,306
And so in that moment,
all of my hope was extinguished.

242
00:11:41,956 --> 00:11:45,267
I had grown tired of the calorie counting,

243
00:11:45,267 --> 00:11:46,537
of the weight loss,

244
00:11:46,537 --> 00:11:50,428
of the obsession with everything
food and exercise.

245
00:11:50,428 --> 00:11:53,357
I wanted something more to live for.

246
00:11:53,947 --> 00:11:55,988
So, naturally, I got a job in radio

247
00:11:55,988 --> 00:11:59,558
where I had to wake up at four
in the morning every day for minimum wage.

248
00:11:59,558 --> 00:12:00,838
(Laughter)

249
00:12:01,638 --> 00:12:03,988
And like the vast majority of people

250
00:12:03,988 --> 00:12:06,508
who lose a substantial amount
of weight in their life,

251
00:12:06,508 --> 00:12:07,748
I started to gain it back.

252
00:12:07,748 --> 00:12:11,159
And within a year and a half,
I was the heaviest I'd ever been.

253
00:12:11,159 --> 00:12:13,468
I was 350 pounds

254
00:12:13,468 --> 00:12:16,798
and in the deepest place
of depression I'd ever known.

255
00:12:17,590 --> 00:12:19,610
I didn't have any money
to pay my own rent,

256
00:12:19,610 --> 00:12:21,380
so I'd moved back in with my parents.

257
00:12:21,380 --> 00:12:25,750
And on my 29th birthday,
I found myself sobbing in my mother's lap,

258
00:12:26,388 --> 00:12:30,691
lamenting about the dismal direction
of both my professional and personal life.

259
00:12:30,691 --> 00:12:31,691
And I asked her,

260
00:12:31,691 --> 00:12:35,251
"Mom, how can anything ever change?"

261
00:12:35,801 --> 00:12:38,262
And my mother produced a pendant,

262
00:12:38,462 --> 00:12:40,227
and on it were the words

263
00:12:40,227 --> 00:12:42,962
"Something good is going to happen."

264
00:12:42,962 --> 00:12:48,166
But in my misery, I was hyperfocused
on one detail and one detail only:

265
00:12:48,972 --> 00:12:50,233
when?

266
00:12:50,813 --> 00:12:52,482
So I started to reevaluate my life.

267
00:12:52,482 --> 00:12:55,603
I thought back to when I was
10 years old and 90 pounds,

268
00:12:55,603 --> 00:12:57,733
and now I'm almost 30 and over 300,

269
00:12:57,733 --> 00:12:59,493
and it hadn't mattered.

270
00:12:59,493 --> 00:13:00,663
I'd never been happy;

271
00:13:00,663 --> 00:13:02,214
I'd never loved myself;

272
00:13:02,214 --> 00:13:05,104
I'd always carry the weight of shame.

273
00:13:05,104 --> 00:13:07,734
So I decided to try an experiment,
and I made a promise.

274
00:13:07,734 --> 00:13:11,975
I said, "Whitney, if there is something
that you get asked to do

275
00:13:11,975 --> 00:13:14,435
and your only reason
for declining is to say,

276
00:13:14,435 --> 00:13:16,385
'because I'm fat,'

277
00:13:16,385 --> 00:13:18,885
then you are going to do
that thing anyway."

278
00:13:19,965 --> 00:13:21,675
The universe was listening

279
00:13:21,675 --> 00:13:23,105
because you'd better believe -

280
00:13:23,105 --> 00:13:24,745
three days later,

281
00:13:24,745 --> 00:13:26,696
I got a message from a local photographer

282
00:13:26,696 --> 00:13:30,866
who told me she wanted to take
some boudoir photographs of me for free.

283
00:13:32,356 --> 00:13:33,877
I wrote back to her immediately:

284
00:13:33,877 --> 00:13:39,137
"Sister, I would never in a million years
take my clothes off in front of a camera.

285
00:13:39,137 --> 00:13:40,958
So when should I meet you?"

286
00:13:40,958 --> 00:13:42,338
(Laughter)

287
00:13:43,658 --> 00:13:46,918
A bottle of wine
and a designated driver later,

288
00:13:46,918 --> 00:13:48,118
(Laughter)

289
00:13:48,118 --> 00:13:50,888
I got an unexpected result.

290
00:13:50,888 --> 00:13:53,018
When I looked at this picture,

291
00:13:56,708 --> 00:13:59,370
for the first time in my entire life,

292
00:13:59,370 --> 00:14:01,720
I didn't dissect every flaw,

293
00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:02,720
I didn't cringe,

294
00:14:02,720 --> 00:14:05,960
and in fact, I thought I was beautiful.

295
00:14:06,540 --> 00:14:09,480
So I decided to keep the experiment going.

296
00:14:10,071 --> 00:14:14,251
My co-workers at the radio station
were trying to ask me to do a dance video

297
00:14:14,251 --> 00:14:15,775
and call it "A Fat Girl Dancing"

298
00:14:15,775 --> 00:14:17,010
and put it on YouTube.

299
00:14:17,010 --> 00:14:19,881
And at first, my reaction
was "absolutely not"

300
00:14:19,881 --> 00:14:22,242
because no one has seen me
dance since I was 18 -

301
00:14:22,242 --> 00:14:23,982
fat girls don't get to do that -

302
00:14:23,982 --> 00:14:26,582
and I'm still balking at the word "fat."

303
00:14:27,002 --> 00:14:28,362
And I had to ask myself,

304
00:14:28,362 --> 00:14:30,603
"Whitney, of anyone on the planet,

305
00:14:30,603 --> 00:14:33,123
don't you know that being fat

306
00:14:33,123 --> 00:14:37,123
isn't synonymous with worthless,
lazy, stupid, undeserving?"

307
00:14:37,773 --> 00:14:40,158
I wasn't sure that I knew,

308
00:14:40,158 --> 00:14:41,923
but I wanted to find out if I did,

309
00:14:41,923 --> 00:14:43,464
so I said yes.

310
00:14:43,774 --> 00:14:48,694
And I posted this video onto the internet,

311
00:14:49,614 --> 00:14:53,265
and a few days later,
I started getting a lot of phone calls.

312
00:14:53,705 --> 00:14:55,090
But they weren't normal calls

313
00:14:55,090 --> 00:14:57,855
like from my dad asking me
if I had toilet paper and stuff.

314
00:14:58,535 --> 00:15:03,455
It was like Steve Harvey and CNN,
Good Morning America, and the Today Show,

315
00:15:03,455 --> 00:15:06,605
and they all told me they wanted me
to come on their programs,

316
00:15:06,605 --> 00:15:08,165
talk about my dance video,

317
00:15:08,165 --> 00:15:09,886
and explain this new lifestyle,

318
00:15:09,886 --> 00:15:13,247
this new "body positive" lifestyle
that I was leading.

319
00:15:14,107 --> 00:15:15,396
And I couldn't understand -

320
00:15:15,396 --> 00:15:19,686
like what is so special or subversive
about a fat woman dancing?

321
00:15:19,686 --> 00:15:21,281
But I went on the shows,

322
00:15:21,281 --> 00:15:23,377
and I did my little dance.

323
00:15:23,867 --> 00:15:26,237
And then the letters started coming in.

324
00:15:26,237 --> 00:15:29,878
I got an email from a boy,
a teenage boy in Lebanon, and he said,

325
00:15:29,878 --> 00:15:32,173
"Whitney, it's illegal to be gay here,

326
00:15:32,173 --> 00:15:33,759
and I'm gay.

327
00:15:33,759 --> 00:15:38,410
But when I watch your videos,
I feel like my life is going to be okay."

328
00:15:39,019 --> 00:15:40,479
And I said,

329
00:15:42,439 --> 00:15:43,436
"Okay."

330
00:15:43,436 --> 00:15:44,746
(Laughs)

331
00:15:46,029 --> 00:15:48,550
Then after that, some more letters
started pouring in.

332
00:15:48,550 --> 00:15:52,400
This one was from TLC, and they asked me
if I would consider doing a reality show.

333
00:15:52,400 --> 00:15:55,917
I mulled it over and thought about how
it could ruin my life and reputation

334
00:15:55,917 --> 00:15:57,591
and all the ways it still might.

335
00:15:58,241 --> 00:16:01,551
But then I thought
about that boy in Lebanon,

336
00:16:01,551 --> 00:16:02,841
and for every other person

337
00:16:02,841 --> 00:16:05,981
who had never turned on a TV
and seen someone who looked like them,

338
00:16:05,981 --> 00:16:07,441
who struggled like them,

339
00:16:07,441 --> 00:16:09,582
and so I said yes.

340
00:16:11,722 --> 00:16:15,862
It wasn't before long
that even more letters started pouring in.

341
00:16:15,862 --> 00:16:19,363
And many of them were from fat women,
but just as many of them weren't.

342
00:16:19,363 --> 00:16:20,903
I was talking to little girls,

343
00:16:20,903 --> 00:16:21,903
anorexic women,

344
00:16:21,903 --> 00:16:23,443
people with different abilities,

345
00:16:23,443 --> 00:16:26,364
grandfathers that had always
hated their noses.

346
00:16:27,483 --> 00:16:31,223
And then I realized, like,
it's not about the fact that I'm fat;

347
00:16:31,223 --> 00:16:33,834
it's about the fact
that I am living a shame-free life

348
00:16:33,834 --> 00:16:37,164
in spite of a society
that tells me I don't deserve to.

349
00:16:38,114 --> 00:16:42,715
We all have something that society
tells us we should feel shame about.

350
00:16:42,715 --> 00:16:44,560
For me, it's visible

351
00:16:44,560 --> 00:16:48,226
in a world where thinness
is championed above all else,

352
00:16:48,226 --> 00:16:50,465
where we tell women in no uncertain terms,

353
00:16:50,465 --> 00:16:53,336
"If you are not young enough,
thin enough, and pretty enough,

354
00:16:53,336 --> 00:16:55,726
you're disposable"

355
00:16:56,156 --> 00:16:58,026
Living in that world,

356
00:16:58,506 --> 00:17:03,387
deciding to love my body
had become a radical act.

357
00:17:03,387 --> 00:17:07,247
And doing what I loved in that body
had become powerful.

358
00:17:07,877 --> 00:17:11,297
And then came the inevitable
questions from everybody:

359
00:17:11,297 --> 00:17:13,687
"How is this doable?"

360
00:17:13,687 --> 00:17:15,977
I never used to know
how to answer this question,

361
00:17:15,977 --> 00:17:19,128
because I didn't know
how to tell someone to be like me.

362
00:17:19,528 --> 00:17:23,257
But now I think I know how to tell people
to be more like them.

363
00:17:23,257 --> 00:17:26,949
We think that we have to magically
have confidence before we do something,

364
00:17:26,949 --> 00:17:28,930
but this is backwards.

365
00:17:29,569 --> 00:17:32,548
Confidence is a product of action,
not the other way around.

366
00:17:32,548 --> 00:17:36,540
If I had to wait to have the confidence,
I'd never get out of bed to do anything.

367
00:17:37,720 --> 00:17:39,275
I had to do the hard stuff -

368
00:17:39,275 --> 00:17:42,370
in my case, posing
half-naked and dancing -

369
00:17:42,370 --> 00:17:44,960
and then the confidence came as a reward,

370
00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:47,611
and the confidence
came as a building block.

371
00:17:48,181 --> 00:17:52,361
But living authentically shame-free
is not sunshine and roses.

372
00:17:52,361 --> 00:17:54,501
Every day on the internet
and in my real life,

373
00:17:54,501 --> 00:17:57,673
I'm told that I am disgusting, delusional,

374
00:17:57,673 --> 00:18:00,672
and should hurry up and have
that heart attack I'm bound to have

375
00:18:00,672 --> 00:18:02,332
so the world will be rid of me.

376
00:18:03,332 --> 00:18:04,622
But living shame-free

377
00:18:04,622 --> 00:18:10,463
has also brought more joy into my life
than I ever could believe existed.

378
00:18:10,463 --> 00:18:11,465
It has connected me

379
00:18:11,465 --> 00:18:14,033
with millions of people
I'd have never met face-to-face

380
00:18:14,033 --> 00:18:17,503
and injected the color
and happiness back into my life.

381
00:18:18,003 --> 00:18:20,474
Now, I often think
of one of my favorite quotes

382
00:18:20,474 --> 00:18:22,554
from my favorite feminist, Audre Lorde.

383
00:18:22,554 --> 00:18:26,964
She said, "I am deliberate
and afraid of nothing."

384
00:18:26,964 --> 00:18:30,954
And then I think
back to this picture - 1989.

385
00:18:31,725 --> 00:18:33,865
Five years old,
before my first dance recital,

386
00:18:33,865 --> 00:18:36,384
this little girl was deliberate
and afraid of nothing,

387
00:18:36,384 --> 00:18:39,875
serving up all the face
and sass in the world,

388
00:18:39,875 --> 00:18:43,726
completely unapologetic about what
she knew she was put on this earth to do.

389
00:18:44,286 --> 00:18:47,378
I think we get discouraged
because we've all been that little girl

390
00:18:47,378 --> 00:18:50,246
but then the world
beats and breaks us down.

391
00:18:50,246 --> 00:18:52,916
We think that being confident, being happy

392
00:18:52,916 --> 00:18:55,707
should be as easy as putting
on a light switch, right?

393
00:18:55,707 --> 00:18:59,457
Just do it, just be happy,
just love yourself.

394
00:18:59,457 --> 00:19:02,588
But it isn't that easy, and I know that.

395
00:19:02,588 --> 00:19:04,128
It's not like a light switch.

396
00:19:04,128 --> 00:19:05,839
Living authentically free of shame

397
00:19:05,839 --> 00:19:10,186
is more like stumbling toward
a motion sensor light in the dark.

398
00:19:11,088 --> 00:19:15,478
You have to advance forward
to a target that you can't see

399
00:19:15,478 --> 00:19:17,599
but trust that you'll
ultimately get there.

400
00:19:17,599 --> 00:19:18,789
And the universe is funny

401
00:19:18,789 --> 00:19:21,169
because the only thing
that will turn that light on

402
00:19:21,169 --> 00:19:24,060
is your movement and your action.

403
00:19:24,060 --> 00:19:25,425
And if you live this way -

404
00:19:25,425 --> 00:19:29,470
if you know that every time you're
stumbling and spinning and scrambling,

405
00:19:29,470 --> 00:19:31,630
you are actually doing the hard part,

406
00:19:31,630 --> 00:19:35,761
you are actually doing the work
even if you can't pinpoint your progress -

407
00:19:35,761 --> 00:19:38,441
if you make a commitment
to live a shame-free life

408
00:19:38,441 --> 00:19:41,771
and know that it's an undertaking
that you have to do every single day,

409
00:19:41,771 --> 00:19:43,091
day in and day out,

410
00:19:43,091 --> 00:19:46,922
and you are deliberate
about choosing that life -

411
00:19:46,922 --> 00:19:49,792
you will find yourself illuminated.

412
00:19:49,792 --> 00:19:51,472
And if you're like me,

413
00:19:51,472 --> 00:19:54,344
it'll probably be
when you least expect it.

414
00:19:54,344 --> 00:19:55,344
Thank you.

415
00:19:55,344 --> 00:19:57,743
(Applause)