Shaka Senghor: The Transformational Power of Compassion | SuperSoul Sessions | Oprah Winfrey Network

The fourth thing I learned that I want to share is the power of transformation. It's the ability to emerge from the cocoon of spiritual, mental, and emotional immaturity into your full, actualized self. Now, when I was having all these epiphanies while I was in solitary confinement, I knew that they would mean nothing until I got released, until I got put to the test, until I was given the opportunity to challenge the things that I said I now believed in. And so in 2004, after four and a half years in the most deplorable, dehumanizing, degrading conditions known to mankind in our world, I walked out of solitary confinement. The expectation was that I would be the old me, that whenever conflict arose, I would respond in a way that wasn't healthy. You know, the yards of prison is a very violent environment, and, you know, might makes right. So. So when I get out, I knew that there was going to be challenges. And one day, true to what I knew about the nature of the environment, I was met with a challenge. There was a guy who came to prison. He was a community activist. He came for some trumped up charges. And I was given a responsibility, just by virtue of my senior status on the yard, to ensure that he had, you know, he was safe wherever he went in the prison and that he was respected. So I'm escorting him to Chow Chow Hall. That's this little place where they serve this nasty food. But I'm escorting him and we're standing in line, and the guy literally just jumps through and cuts the line. Now, in prison, that's enough to get you stabbed or at minimum, hit upside the head, whatever the case may be. And there was that moment when I felt disrespect not to my authentic self, but to the prison mask that I had wore for so many years. And I was like, how do I respond? Because everybody's looking in the kitchen, everybody in the childhood looking. How's he going to respond to this? This is big sock on the yard. This is, you know, the guy. How does he respond to this? And what I did is I paused and I looked at him and I saw the little boy in him. And I told myself that transformation comes when we can see the broken child in every person we encounter. So from moving forward, every time I find myself in conflict, I always made sure that I looked at the broken child inside the person because that was their authentic self. And I reminded myself that if I only responded to their authentic self, I can only respond out of kindness, empathy, and compassion. Hi, YouTubers, I'm excited to give you an update about our own YouTube channel. Now you can find new videos every day. They're the kind of videos that will make you look at life differently. They may even make you laugh a little bit. Who doesn't need a daily dose of that? So here's just a taste of some of what you'll see. Subscribe to the own channel today and we'll see you on YouTube.