Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters

INTRODUCTION
Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
-- Teddy Roosevelt

Target: America's Sweetheart

As Oprah moved silently down the long, winding staircase in the pitch black of night, she was totally alone, a rare circumstance given the intense schedule we were following in Amarillo. Since a conventional hotel would have been a security nightmare, we were living in a rambling, three-story house on the outskirts of this West Texas town. The armed guards who kept twenty-four-hour watch around the perimeter of "Camp Oprah" now sat in the dark, huddled against the cold. They had no idea she was on the move; every floor appeared dark and asleep. Except for the familiar low moan and creak of the frigid wind from the north, everything was silent. Descending a second flight of stairs, she tapped lightly on my door with a single fingernail. I knew it was she, and she knew I would know, so she spoke not a word. It was well after midnight. She had gone to bed two hours earlier, but I knew she would sleep fitfully, if at all. It was like that for all of us, but especially for her. Behind enemy lines in cattle country, we all slept light and kept our guard up, alert to the reality of hostile feelings from certain factions in Amarillo.

Over the course of the previous day, I had seen a certain change occur in her eyes. At the federal courthouse downtown people were not saying nice things; they were attacking her staff in order to get to her. Like a mother lion whose cubs were being threatened, she was up and on the prowl. Could it be the enemy had gone too far?

When I opened the door, she looked forlornly alone, and her face betrayed the painful struggle that was keeping her awake. There were tears in her eyes, but these were not the tears of sympathy and love that millions of viewers had often seen on her television show. In her familiar flannel pajamas and huge fuzzy house shoes, she looked much younger than she was. She needed to talk. It would be a long night.

The private Oprah and the television Oprah are about as close to the same as anyone might imagine. But no one had ever seen her in a situation like this. In some ways, the experience of this trial was foreign to her; in other ways, it was the same old test, different classroom. Oprah's high-spirited, "always on," self-assured persona sometimes caused even me, who had come to know her so well, to forget that she was as vulnerable to hurt as any of us. As I came to learn, the trademark self-assuredness that twenty million Americans see every day springs from her being masterfully in control, even in what may seem like spontaneity and chaos, and from doing what she dearly loves -- two conditions obviously not present in her situation in Amarillo. Nevertheless, she remained the trouper, always doing for others, always concerned, even under siege.