My Favorite Human: Oprah Winfrey

I really can’t think of another person who I respect more than Oprah Winfrey. I am sure there are a lot of people deserving of tons of respect, but Oprah stands pretty close to the top with me….

Why?, because she is the perfect example of someone who has achieved an immense amount of success, stardom, and wealth, and yet she speaks and lives on the same level as the average citizen. Oprah has no pretense of superiority, in fact, she insists on living as close as she can to the uncelebrated, un-wealthy, and underprivileged, perhaps because she herself came from the most humble of beginnings.….

Oprah was born into poverty to a single teenage mother in rural Mississippi. She was raped at age 9 and became pregnant at age 14. The rest is history….

When I think of Oprah I think of tremendous resilience and courage, but perhaps even more than that, I think of the way she lives her life so incredibly connected to others. She has changed countless lives on so many levels.

The one quote from Oprah that I think of every week, if not every day:

“the greatest thing about making a lot of money is that you get to give it away” – Oprah

Oprah actually comes up with creative ways to give money away in order to help other people to attain their dreams, or at least, to give them a moment of happiness. I often wonder why Oprah’s philosophy for living seems so uncommon. I see and read about so many wealthy people, people with tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, who appear to keep all of it to themselves, or darn near most of it, thinking that, perhaps, they have done something special that allows them to live so much more extravagantly than others. It is easy to think that we have all done something special to deserve our heightened place in life...but the Truth is (in my opinion) that we all have been given tremendous gifts that have allowed us to be successful. For some it is sheer physical beauty, for others it is tremendous talent in sports or entertainment, others will be gifted with tremendous intelligence or creativity, or tremendous parenting and opportunity that allowed them to attend college and study in their fields of interest; still others just got tremendously lucky....

I think one of the most satisfying things about being independently wealthy would be to be able to have the privilege of knowing that everyday of your life you can set out to change the lives of other people…you could pay for an underprivileged kid to go to college, send someone on a shopping spree, give someone some valuable help in starting a new business, or even just pick up a stranger’s dinner tab. There are so many creative ways to change someone’s life that it would be a constant source of joy and entertainment…as well as a constant source of relevance.

So many people who have everything are still empty and in search for relevance….what could be more relevant than changing people’s lives everyday….?