[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
>> There you are.
I have been waiting 56 years to find you.
I made an agreement with you some time long ago
that I would show up and that I would be here
and that I would just love ya, so let me do that.
You are magnificent creatures [laughter].
You are a miraculous engineering of possibilities.
I know. I heard somebody go, wow.
[Laughter] And everything begins with a story,
everything that you've been listening
to thus far has started with a story,
let me tell you a story.
I was auditioning for something about 25 years ago,
and I was walking down this hall and I was standing
with a whole lot of people that I didn't know,
and when you stand with a lot of people that you don't know,
you tend to vibrate.
You vibrate with the unknown.
Now I learned how not to vibrate with the unknown
and we'll talk about that in a second.
But as I'm standing there, to my left,
someone had written on the wall in pen,
this is happening now.
And that, I went, pfft [laughter], that absolutely just,
actually like Cesar Millan,
I was knocked out of my vibration and I started going wow,
this is happening now.
And that sort of quality of my life began me on a journey
that I have continued to live on a moment-to-moment basis,
because, my darlings, this, for us,
is happening right this minute.
Those that see it have their own now,
but what you have is not only information from me,
and information from these fabulous speakers in this series,
you, in the now, get the experience of the information.
And let me tell you, what I have to tell you is
that information is easy, experience is hard.
The experience of being a human being,
the attention it takes to stay right here in the now,
that is what it's like to both be an actor,
but to be a human being.
So what do I know?
I know a lot of stuff, I have a PhD,
which makes me pretty hard to dismiss in any room,
but you should watch that happen [laughter].
I am dismissed all up and down because I'm a woman,
because I'm gay, because I was an actor for 25 years,
all of a sudden, this act of dismissal takes place.
And when people dismiss you,
things have started to get complicated.
Let's talk about simplicity.
I have learned some things, after 25 years of acting,
after 56 years of life, is that we tend to complicate it.
We tend to get really, yes my sister,
you just nod with me [laughter],
we tend to really get complicated
about what this journey is about.
There are moments in our lives when things get really clear.
I have to tell you a moment,
there was a moment where I was standing on the stage
of the Majestic Theater, living my highest dream
of the time, and I was singing the note
that had gotten me the job, and that note was really high.
I had spent years and years learning how to sing that note,
retaining the information of that note,
and as I sang that note, something happened.
The medical community calls it a stroke [laughter].
The, the religious community likes to call it a revelation.
The law community said no, no, no, no,
that didn't happen, that didn't happen.
Something happened, but we don't know what happened,
no that didn't happen, that didn't happen [laughter].
It's alright.
Everyone should go to court in one time in your life,
it's such an experience.
Alright [laughter].
But I have found clarity here at Penn State University,
because I had begun working with engineers.
And engineers sort of told me what happened,
they said well the structure fell apart,
and then what happened was this structure,
then this structure filled in the blank,
then that structure, but what happened was I simplified,
clarified, and focused my life, my energy,
my humanity down to something very simple.
Breathe. Let's all take a breath [deep breath], no,
really, do it with me!
Come on! I can see you,
I can't see them on video, but I can see you!
Breathe! Let it out please.
[Sigh] My gosh, don't you feel better?
We forget to breathe.
We think that we are all this information floating around,
which we might actually be, I am.
And that moment of, [squeaking sound]
and it had a sound effect, let me tell you,
in that moment of [squeaking sound],
I had to get real clear about what I am.
I am a human being in space with you.
I am just like you.
I am miraculous, because I survived the un-survivable.
I am an engineer because I rebuilt myself
from the bottom up.
And I am a creative artist
because I imagined myself on the other side.
I dreamed my possibilities and then I built them.
I am also what I know, but the magic of this is that I know
that I am not what I know,
I know I am what I do with what I know.
I believe.
What do I believe?
I believe, I believe in people.
I believe in you.
Not the power that surrounds you.
So because of what I believe in,
I teach people to tell their stories.
It's an extraordinary thing.
I ask people to simplify, clarify, and focus on a moment,
and then tell that story in one minute.
And then I put a lot of those minutes on a stage,
in front of people like you.
And after about 40 minutes of stories
about who people are, we then talk.
You have no idea, what you don't know is your power
in the system.
You are in front of me
and you are actually deciding what I'm saying,
because after this, pfft,
I was left with a kind of sense of energy.
So when I walked out, everybody say oooh,
and I hit certain moments and I hear you ooohoooh.
I'm singing, see I'm singing now.
I can feel it.
What we are all a part of.
And I have to tell you, your individual stories are the key
to knowing who you are in the system
of energy that surrounds you.
I promise, in order to find
out what you want, you have to dream.
That's what creativity is all about.
That's a big buzzword right now.
I work with engineers, I've even worked with an astronaut.
He was fantastic.
All of a sudden what I do has become very interesting
to science and to technology.
It's just dream, and it's just how can you be
in the possible?
Being in the possible is being in the now.
And here's my teacher.
That's Cesar Millan, that's the dog whisperer.
Oh come on!
Cesar Millan has guided me in this.
I watched, how many episodes do I watch,
my beautiful wife is on the front row,
I watch three episodes of Cesar Millan a day,
because he keeps [laughter].
While you're tweeting and on Facebook,
I'm watching Cesar Millan.
I don't know which, it doesn't matter what qualify
about that, but what you get to know about Cesar Millan is
that he says he rehabilitates dogs and he trains people.
What he does with people is he says be a dog, be in the now,
move on, forgive, and dream about your next meal.
I thank you.
Be strong, be powerful, be creative, be possible,
and simplify, clarify, and focus.
Peace.
[ Applause and Cheering ]