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There we were,
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souls and bodies packed into a Texas church
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on the last night of our lives.
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Packed into a room just like this,
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but with creaky wooden pews draped in worn-down red fabric,
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with an organ to my left and a choir at my back
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and a baptism pool built into the wall behind them.
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A room like this, nonetheless.
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With the same great feelings of suspense,
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the same deep hopes for salvation,
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the same sweat in the palms
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and the same people in the back not paying attention.
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(Laughter)
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This was December 31, 1999,
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the night of the Second Coming of Christ,
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and the end of the world as I knew it.
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I had turned 12 that year
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and had reached the age of accountability.
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And once I stopped complaining
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about how unfair it was that Jesus would return
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as soon as I had to be accountable for all that I had done,
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I figured I had better get my house in order very quickly.
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So I went to church as often as I could.
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I listened for silence as anxiously as one might listen for noise,
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trying to be sure that the Lord hadn't pulled a fast one on me
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and decided to come back early.
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And just in case he did,
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I built a backup plan,
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by reading the "Left Behind" books that were all the rage at the time.
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And I found in their pages
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that if I was not taken in the rapture at midnight,
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I had another shot.
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All I had to do was avoid taking the mark of the beast,
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fight off demons, plagues and the Antichrist himself.
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It would be hard --
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(Laughter)
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but I knew I could do it.
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(Laughter)
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But planning time was over now.
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It was 11:50pm.
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We had 10 minutes left,
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and my pastor called us out of the pews and down to the altar
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because he wanted to be praying when midnight struck.
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So every faction of the congregation
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took its place.
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The choir stayed in the choir stand,
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the deacons and their wives --
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or the Baptist Bourgeoisie as I like to call them --
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(Laughter)
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took first position in front of the altar.
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You see, in America,
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even the Second Coming of Christ has a VIP section.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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And right behind the Baptist Bourgeoisie
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were the elderly --
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these men and women whose young backs had been bent under hot suns
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in the cotton fields of East Texas,
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and whose skin seemed to be burnt a creaseless noble brown,
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just like the clay of East Texas,
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and whose hopes and dreams for what life might become
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outside of East Texas
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had sometimes been bent and broken
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even further than their backs.
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Yes, these men and women were the stars of the show for me.
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They had waited their whole lives for this moment,
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just as their medieval predecessors had longed for the end of the world,
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and just as my grandmother waited for the Oprah Winfrey Show
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to come on Channel 8 every day at 4 o'clock.
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And as she made her way to the altar,
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I snuck right in behind her,
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because I knew for sure
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that my grandmother was going to heaven.
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And I thought that if I held on to her hand during this prayer,
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I might go right on with her.
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So I held on
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and I closed my eyes
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to listen,
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to wait.
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And the prayers got louder.
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And the shouts of response to the call of the prayer
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went up higher even still.
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And the organ rolled on in to add the dirge.
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And the heat came on to add to the sweat.
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And my hand gripped firmer,
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so I wouldn't be the one left in the field.
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My eyes clenched tighter
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so I wouldn't see the wheat being separated from the chaff.
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And then a voice rang out above us:
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"Amen."
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It was over.
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I looked at the clock.
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It was after midnight.
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I looked at the elder believers
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whose savior had not come,
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who were too proud to show any signs of disappointment,
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who had believed too much and for too long
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to start doubting now.
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But I was upset on their behalf.
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They had been duped,
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hoodwinked, bamboozled,
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and I had gone right along with them.
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I had prayed their prayers,
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I had yielded not to temptation as best I could.
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I had dipped my head not once, but twice
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in that snot-inducing baptism pool.
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I had believed.
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Now what?
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I got home just in time to turn on the television
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and watch Peter Jennings announce the new millennium
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as it rolled in around the world.
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It struck me that it would have been strange anyway,
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for Jesus to come back again and again
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based on the different time zones.
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(Laughter)
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And this made me feel even more ridiculous --
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hurt, really.
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But there on that night, I did not stop believing.
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I just believed a new thing:
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that it was possible not to believe.
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It was possible the answers I had were wrong,
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that the questions themselves were wrong.
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And now, where there was once a mountain of certitude,
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there was, running right down to its foundation,
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a spring of doubt,
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a spring that promised rivers.
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I can trace the whole drama of my life
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back to that night in that church
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when my savior did not come for me;
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when the thing I believed most certainly
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turned out to be, if not a lie,
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then not quite the truth.
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And even though most of you prepared for Y2K in a very different way,
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I'm convinced that you are here
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because some part of you has done the same thing that I have done
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since the dawn of this new century,
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since my mother left and my father stayed away
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and my Lord refused to come.
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And I held out my hand,
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reaching for something to believe in.
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I held on when I arrived at Yale at 18,
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with the faith that my journey from Oak Cliff, Texas
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was a chance to leave behind all the challenges I had known,
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the broken dreams and broken bodies I had seen.
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But when I found myself back home one winter break,
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with my face planted in the floor,
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my hands tied behind my back
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and a burglar's gun pressed to my head,
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I knew that even the best education couldn't save me.
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I held on when I showed up at Lehman Brothers
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as an intern in 2008.
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(Laughter)
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So hopeful --
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(Laughter)
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that I called home to inform my family
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that we'd never be poor again.
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(Laughter)
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But as I witnessed this temple of finance
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come crashing down before my eyes,
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I knew that even the best job couldn't save me.
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I held on when I showed up in Washington DC as a young staffer,
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who had heard a voice call out from Illinois,
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saying, "It's been a long time coming,
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but in this election, change has come to America."
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But as the Congress ground to a halt
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and the country ripped at the seams
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and hope and change began to feel like a cruel joke,
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I knew that even the political second coming
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could not save me.
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I had knelt faithfully at the altar of the American Dream,
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praying to the gods of my time
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of success,
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and money,
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and power.
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But over and over again,
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midnight struck, and I opened my eyes
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to see that all of these gods were dead.
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And from that graveyard,
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I began the search once more,
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not because I was brave,
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but because I knew that I would either believe
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or I would die.
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So I took a pilgrimage to yet another mecca,
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Harvard Business School --
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(Laughter)
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this time, knowing that I could not simply accept the salvation
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that it claimed to offer.
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No, I knew there'd be more work to do.
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The work began in the dark corner of a crowded party,
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in the late night of an early, miserable Cambridge winter,
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when three friends and I asked a question
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that young folks searching for something real have asked
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for a very long time:
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"What if we took a road trip?"
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(Laughter)
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We didn't know where'd we go or how we'd get there,
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but we knew we had to do it.
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Because all our lives we yearned, as Jack Kerouac wrote,
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to "sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere,"
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and go find out what everybody was doing
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all over the country.
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So even though there were other voices who said
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that the risk was too great and the proof too thin,
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we went on anyhow.
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We went on 8,000 miles across America in the summer of 2013,
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through the cow pastures of Montana, through the desolation of Detroit,
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through the swamps of New Orleans,
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where we found and worked with men and women
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who were building small businesses
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that made purpose their bottom line.
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And having been trained at the West Point of capitalism,
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this struck us as a revolutionary idea.
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(Laughter)
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And this idea spread,
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growing into a nonprofit called MBAs Across America,
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a movement that landed me here on this stage today.
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It spread because we found a great hunger in our generation
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for purpose, for meaning.
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It spread because we found countless entrepreneurs
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in the nooks and crannies of America
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who were creating jobs and changing lives
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and who needed a little help.
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But if I'm being honest, it also spread
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because I fought to spread it.
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There was no length to which I would not go
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to preach this gospel,
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to get more people to believe
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that we could bind the wounds of a broken country,
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one social business at a time.
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But it was this journey of evangelism
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that led me to the rather different gospel
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that I've come to share with you today.
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It began one evening almost a year ago
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at the Museum of Natural History in New York City,
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at a gala for alumni of Harvard Business School.
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Under a full-size replica of a whale,
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I sat with the titans of our time
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as they celebrated their peers and their good deeds.
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There was pride in a room
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where net worth and assets under management
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surpassed half a trillion dollars.
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We looked over all that we had made,
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and it was good.
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(Laughter)
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But it just so happened,
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two days later,
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I had to travel up the road to Harlem,
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where I found myself sitting in an urban farm
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that had once been a vacant lot,
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listening to a man named Tony tell me of the kids
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that showed up there every day.
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All of them lived below the poverty line.
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Many of them carried all of their belongings in a backpack
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to avoid losing them in a homeless shelter.
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Some of them came to Tony's program,
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called Harlem Grown,
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to get the only meal they had each day.
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Tony told me that he started Harlem Grown with money from his pension,
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after 20 years as a cab driver.