OPRAH WINFREY, EXISTENTIAL THINKER?

I saw the last Oprah Winfrey show on television. People cried their eyes out.  So many touching testimonials, so many people confessing their deep gratitude for everything they learned over the 25 years of the show. It seems trivial, I've already read a cynical comment about her and her last show.  Someone pejoratively compared it to a TV  self-help version. Being a psychotherapist of rigorous training I must say that I do not agree with this.

I don't watch much TV, but  a good friend of mine, a very talented journalist, told me a few things about Oprah Winfrey’ personality and her adventures in Africa and in the poor regions of the USA that first intrigued me and soon made me watch Oprah’s show in a Brazilian channel.

Since then I admire among her amazing character qualities, her tireless calling for authenticity, the calling of the guts to be oneself, to be who we are. The calling for everyone, men and women, whites and blacks, to live the  freedom and in search for what makes them happy and fulfilled.

 Both on the TV show and in her magazine, Oprah constantly points out the importance of the choices we (do) on every  moment of our lives. She talks about the need to look within ourselves with courage and lucidity, but never forgetting that Dasein is a being-in-the world, and so always along with the other. No human experience can exclude the existence of the other: this is an ontological truth, which means that it is common to and inherent, constitutional to all beings.

 Isn't it amazing that Martin Heidegger wrote about this early on the 20th century and  that today we can "find it" in Oprah Winfrey’s sayings?

I’m pround of  finding out that concepts, proposals, criticisms, reflections, thoughts and values – so many times reaffirmed by philosophers, psychiatrists and psychologists fundamental in my training as a psychotherapist – are disclosed by popular people ( popular in the sense of their acceptance by millions of people, such as Oprah Winfrey) and by far strands of thought and faith (far, placing us as references ...) as Tibetan Buddhism. This gives me a very special universal experience of sharing this with no borders of time, geography, language or culture. It feels peaceful  and joyful to me.

Anyway, I wanted to write about two subjects that I’m fond of: the weltanschauung (vision of the world) grounded in the existential philosophy and the possibility of finding its truths in such distinct languages, as in a media artist or in a very admired religious and political leader.

Dasein é a expressão usada de modo muito próprio pelo filósofo alemão Martin Heidegger. Designa uma especificidade do ser humano:ele é o ser-aí (Da-sein), presente, no mundo.