By KARI BLURTON
Hays Post
Rainn Wilson, best known for his role as the eccentric but lovable Dwight Schrute on the popular TV show ‘The Office,’ presented “SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions” to a full house at Beach/Schmidt Performing Arts Center in Hays Thursday evening.
The acclaimed actor started with a sing-along of the band Kansas’ 1977 hit song “Carry On Wayward Son.”
“Carry on my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest. Don’t you cry no more,” Wilson and the audience sang together.
The song’s lyrics echoed how Wilson described SP, to “uplift people, connect people, inspire and challenge them at the same time.”
As he joked with the audience and posed for a few pictures, the discussion got more serious as Wilson described a journey of growing up with faith, leaving it behind, coming back to his faith, and finding happiness in the here and now, not the ‘what ifs and whens.’
“What my talk is all about, and what SP is all about, is people going on a spiritual journey…a journey of self-discovery,” Wilson said. “One of the things that can help people on that journey is a reflection on our own mortality…we are given just a certain number of heartbeats and you have to make your choices about your life in that time, and if not now, when?”
Wilson has traveled the country with his “mission-based” movement but says he prefers talking at colleges like FHSU in smaller cities.
“In my experience, I really like going to middle America to do these talks more. I think people in middle America, their minds and their hearts are actually more open into seeing the spiritual, the Divine, and looking at their lives as having a purpose,” he said.
During the show, Wilson showed a video from the SP YouTube channel and a segment of what he called his “most proudest” SP project, a series called ‘My Last Days’ with advice on living life from people who are facing death due to a terminal illness.
Although Wilson admitted at times the series is sad, it serves to inspire. He pointed to one feature about Zach Sobiech, a 17-year-old diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer who wrote the popular iTunes song “Clouds,” which after his death in May 2013, still serves to raise money for cancer research.
“It’s simple. Try to make people happy…as long as you learn that, you’re going to make the world a better place,” Sobiech said as he discussed life in a MLD video feature shared with the Hays audience.
Wilson ended his talk by saying, “I don’t know all the answers,” but he asked the audience to seek their own truth through spiritual teachings, philosophy, art and more.
He also shared his favorite quote attributed to French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who died in 1955 , “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
For more SP, visit the website HERE.