Coolest thing about Oprah's final show: She gave me her email address!
That's right. I can send a note to oprah@oprah.com and I might get a personal message from Oprah and she might read my email. At Happiness, we thought this opened up a lot of possibilites.
SUBJECT LINE: HEY
Hey, Oprah! What's up?
Other than that, Oprah's final show was, she said, a love letter to us, her viewers. But it was also our final lesson from a teacher who was also taught by us in the world's biggest classroom. And it was kind of a review session to make sure we got the major points of our 25 year-long course. For those reluctantly enrolled in O University, the final show was easy to mock. Those with an O graduate degree, earned credits toward a PhD.
Clad in a salmon-colored scoop neck dress with a tasseled belt at the waist that had tiers in colors in the same color family (a sparkly pink bracelet on her wrist also had tassels, a nice touch), O weaved in footage of past guests and moments to make her point.
What she first knew for sure was that we all have a calling. We have to figure out what our is and get about the business of doing it. You know it's a calling, she said, if it lights you up, apparently like Lady Gaga (which could mean it lights you up literally) or Tina Turner or this lady she had on who loved popping zits.
O said, don't get it twisted: Just because she had a show, doesn't make her special. You see, we each have a platform. It's where ever we are. (Side note: I've always thought that in some ways, my life was an exercise in performance art.) Sadly, you may not get paid for your calling. After all, we can't all be like O, where our passion lines right on up with our profession. But being fabolously wealthy isn't the point. You know that, right?
O talked about how, in the beginning, she did lots of shows featuring people making bad choices. It was the beginning of reality TV, Oprah shrugged. " When you know better, you do better." (Which kinda means either Jerry Springer don't know ish or what Jerry knows for sure is that knowing better doesn't pay as well as ignoring what you know.)
You are responsible for your life, O said. You are responsible for the energy you create and bring to others. It's like Newton's Third Law and like that time in "The Color Purple" when Celie was leaving Mister and she gave him the hex finger and told him "Everything you done to me, already been done to you." Give out love and it will come back to you. That's how it was for Oprah and us: All that love energy she sent out over 25 years made it impossible for us to not love her.
O said most people have feelings of unworthiness. She wants us to know that you are worthy because you are born and here; you alone are enough. This is what people want to know: Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? (I tried this around the office and it works. Too well. Turns out I don't really want to validate these people because it leads to a lot of conversation unworthy of my time.)
O said what got her to this point was her team at Harpo and Jesus, who she says, is the same God you are talking about; "the one and only G-O-D." She knows this because how else could her mother's egg and father's sperm get together after doing the nasty ONE TIME under a tree in Mississippi and spawn an Oprah who got to work at the biggest classroom in the world and be worth a billion dollars?
O has felt that prescence all her life. And it's there for you too. Be still and know it. O always takes the time to wait and listen for guidance that is greater than her meager mind. God is love and light and that light is always speaking to you.
First, it might whisper; then it gets louder, like a thump upside your head, then it's like a brick upside your head, then it's like a brick wall. (Did the voice talk to her about OWN programming or is there a skyscraper upside the head in O's future?)
What are the whispers in your life? O said.
A commercial features Kohl's thanking Oprah and it reminds us of the time that O didn't know about Costco or Walmart and couldn't recognize a tent at REI, so we're wondering if she's heard of Kohl's and thinking we should give Kohl's her new email.
O gets teary when she talks about being a lonely girl in rural Mississippi, and then says we (me and you) are the great love of her life. The camera does not cut to Stedmen who is in the audience. She says the single greatest treasure has been her gratitude for this opportunity.
She does not say goodbye, but "until we meet again. To God be the glory."
Class dismissed.
Assistant Features Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin would like to have her life turned into an animated cartoon.