Time Traveling with Oprah
A story for guarding against pessimism
A few weeks ago, I got to watch Oprah interview Johann Hari about The Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight Loss Drugs at my friend Jen Walsh’s beautiful new bookstore
. Johann is a friend and I’m actually in this book—you can hear our podcast conversation here—so it’s always fun to catch up with him, but it was riveting to watch Oprah do her thing, particularly with someone who is almost as effortlessly excellent as she is. To quote my favorite show Love Island UK, they were cracking on. And there was serious banter. (And yes, I watch Love Island UK to unwind, I talk about it in this week’s solo episode.)
The full conversation will run on her podcast at some point, but there’s a moment I wanted to share with you—and it wasn’t about Ozempic. As Oprah wrapped up the conversation she lamented whether America actually had the will to take the initiative to clean-up our food industry, to take measures like Japan did after World War II. In response, Johann shared a beautiful story.
Johann: “To argue against you, I want to quote you back at you.”
Oprah: “Please do.”
Johann: “I remember this really vividly, I was about eight years old, I was this little gay kid. You did a show where you were debating—it wouldn’t have been gay marriage, it would have been “gay things”—[audience laughter] and a woman in the audience was really homophobic.”
Oprah: “I remember this. She said, ‘How can you do this as someone who cares about people, and as a Christian woman. You can’t go around saying gay people have the same right as other people do.’”
Johann: “And you said, ‘That ain’t my god.’ I remember it so vividly because I’d never heard anyone say that before. There’s no doubt there’s a massive fight to challenge the food system, it’s one of the most powerful industries in the entire world. But when I get pessimistic about it, I think about a friend of mine, Andrew Sullivan. I think about what you said, and I think about Andrew. In 1994 Andrew was diagnosed as HIV positive. This was the height of the AIDS crisis, as far as he knew there was no hope in sight. His best friend Patrick had just died. So he quit his job and went to Provincetown to die. And he decided to do one last thing before he died. He was going to write a book about a crazy, utopian idea that no one had ever written a book about before. He said, ‘Look, I’ll never live to see this idea put into practice. No one alive will live to see it, but maybe someone down the line will find this book and find this idea.’ The idea he wrote the first book about was gay marriage.
“So when I get depressed, I imagine going back in time to 1994 and saying to Andrew, ‘Okay you’re not going to believe me, but 26 years from now, A., You’ll be alive (that would have blown his mind). B., You’ll be married to a really hot man, because that will be legal (that would have also blown his mind). C., I’ll be with you when the Supreme Court of the United States quotes your book when it makes it mandatory for every state in the United States to introduce gay marriage rights. And the next day you’ll be invited to a White House lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag to have dinner with the President to celebrate what you and millions of others have achieved. Oh, and by the way, that President? He’s going to be Black.’
“When I was eight-years-old watching you challenge that homophobe very bravely, because that’s not what people did then. I hadn’t heard of gay marriage and you hadn’t heard of gay marriage, it wasn’t even in our heads. You are an embodiment of incredible changes when people band together and fight together.
“Thank you for your DNC speech, when you spoke about the New Orleans Four, and the story about Recy Taylor in your [Golden Globes] speech, how unthinkable those things to us are now, and how that’s in your lifetime and my lifetime. I agree it’s a long fight. I agree it’s a big thing. But I think your life story and your moral example proves that it can be done.”
It was a really beautiful moment.
I know we are living in weird and uncertain times. I know many of us are so packed with fear and anxiety that we can’t imagine a time when things won’t feel so terrible and polarized. We are walking together into an election next week that is critical and fraught and feels like it will have monumental consequences—all against a backdrop of multiple wars, terrifying weather events, and more.
But next week doesn’t decide our futures, or deliver us to certainty and security. We all have to walk out of the election together, too. Even if “my side” wins, it would not be American to rule over “the other side” like despots. We have to find common ground, because collectively, we are the government. We’re all responsible for the world we want to see. I feel cautiously optimistic—not that I think every race I care about is going to go to my preferences—but because I believe in this collective project. Despite some terrifying backslides and lost rights, we have always found a way to move forward.
In Hope for Cynics, Jamil Zaki writes about the end of the 19th-century, when income equality paralleled what we have today, and when there was a lynching somewhere in the US every two days. Things were far from good. He writes, “After a chaotic and painful labor, the twentieth century gave birth to a vibrant Progressive movement. Activists, workers, and civic leaders assembled into a vast array of new organizations. They built power through strikes, lobbying, and public engagement, and racked up staggering accomplishments. Here are just some of the policies passed between 1888 and 1920: women’s suffrage, the income tax, the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and National Forest and Parks System, child labor laws, the eight-hour workday, campaign finance regulation, and public kindergarten.”
He concludes the book by offering that “progress has a habit of hiding its tracks,” and “cynicism takes root in our amnesia.” May this past decade be the slingshot we need to propel ourselves into the next era.
Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday. Vote early if you can. Thank you to all of you who are door knocking and phone banking too. Take care of yourselves.
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Thank you for this! I needed this reminder today. I keep thinking about the Buddhist story in my kids Stillwater book where the farmer has good things and bad things happening to him and each time the villagers say either "what good luck!" or "what bad luck!" and the farmer always responds "Maybe." When I first read it deep in the pandemic, it became my pandemic mantra - accepting that good luck and bad luck are all mixed up. We don't know how different events will unspool and interact with other events. This is not to say that I do not recognize that we are living through such intense, scary times. It is just to say that we don't really understand, despite our best intellectual efforts, how all of this will play out over the long arc of history.
We need to be clear about our values and what we want the world to look like, to take action toward both and also not get caught in rage or despair or anything else that will burn us right up. We need to keep hoping and keep saying "maybe" and then just get back to work. We need to stay connected to joy and to hope and to love.
and,in response to your essay: people in this country afraid of ANYTHING only need look in the mirror and submit to the awful truth that we are seeing outside ourselves what is in our individual hearts. i am absolutely unafraid of what comes after next week. the world and her people are actually doing well. that is if you have the courage to turn off the screens and speak face to face with the people around you. there may be a strong dose of adulthood coming in our collective future.