Viola Davis: 'Living life for something bigger than yourself is a hero’s journey', Barnard College - 2019

20 May 2019, Barnard College, New York City, New York, USA

[Someone shouts, "I love you!"]

Thank you. I love you, too. And I’m going to show you how much I love you. This speech, these pages have all of my breakfast items on it. Avocado toast, jelly, everything. [Laughs]

President Beilock, distinguished faculty, alumnae, family, friends, the 657 or so sisters in the audience, graduating class. I’m going to make it plain: “History is not the past. It is the present. We carry history with us. We are our history.”

In other words: You’re a product of your environment. Now that term is usually relegated to people from low-income, crime-infested areas…but why? We all are a product of our environment.

Your existence is an amalgamation of every triumph, every hard-won battle, every woman who had an idea and massaged it, and had the courage to use it to change the world. Every person who survived slavery, Jim Crow and the black codes, to the Trail of Tears, wars…and passed their dreams on to you—of love, of hate. Yup, you are also the product of the other: Of silence, of apathy, a school built on stolen ground. Of women, a parent, grandparent, ancestor who suppressed dreams and ideas, who died with lost potential and horrific memories of sexual assault, mental illness, who didn’t feel good enough, or pretty enough or ENOUGH. Even your anxiety is part of your history…and yet here you are. Privileged, blessed…to do…what?

There are two roads that I see that people usually take: The choice to think that your path is all about you and your success, how high you can climb in your career and your status. Or, the so-called “save the world” approach, where you have a vision for the world and, by God, you will change it because you’re different. The first road requires you to mistake your presence for the event, to be in complete denial; and, the second requires you only to deny the really bad stuff. It requires you to forget racism, not see color, intersectionality, poverty… “but maybe I’ll take the sexism because it pertains to me.” Forget any evidence in my family of mental illness, of violence. Forget anything in me that will get in the way. Forget my fear, my pain. BOTH dead end. Both result in well-intentioned, very bright, enthusiastic people doing NOTHING.

How about this as a novel idea: How about owning it? Owning ALL of it—the good and the bad. Own the fact that the 39 delegates who wrote the greatest document, with the greatest mission statement, wrote it when slavery was an institution, Native Americans were being slaughtered and women were fighting for their lives. Own the 100 years of Jim Crow that were implemented after the 13th Amendment, restricting the rights of people who were a quarter black, an eighth black, black-black, Native Americans, Malays, Hispanics, Jews. Own every gun-toting, violent, hate-filled shooter. And own the fact that THAT is America. Own every heroic deed, great idea. Own the mission statement of THIS school. Own all of your memories and experiences, even if they were traumatic. Own it! Own IT! The world is broken because we’re broken. There are too many of us who want to forget. Who said that all of who you are has to be good? All of who you are is who you are. It hurts, you rage, battle it out, ask, “Why?” Then you forgive, reconcile and use your heart, your courage and vision to fix, to heal and then, ultimately, to connect, to empathize. And that empathy creates a passion for people and it all is the fuel of the warrior—a brave, experienced soldier or fighter.

It’s like Thomas Merton said, “If you want to study the social and political history of modern times, study hell.” Power concedes nothing without a demand. Know what that means? Women are under siege: suicide rates have skyrocketed, our reproductive rights are seriously in jeopardy, as is our pay, our healthcare, our safety, our worth. Sex trafficking has risen by 846 percent in the last five years and three-quarters of the victims are women of color. And in the greatest country in the world, we’ve seen a 26.6 percent increase in women dying during childbirth, and a 243 percent increase amongst black women.

You are graduating from a school whose mission it is to not just hand you a diploma, but a sword. You either start wielding it or you put it away as a conversation piece. Because there is a cap to success. Now everybody tells you that’s what you got to hit, that’s the best of the best that you can have in life. And then you hit it and then comes disillusionment, exhaustion, isolation, the imposter syndrome and a loss of passion. Because no one talks about the real final cap, the real ceiling—and that’s significance.

That living life for something bigger than yourself is a hero’s journey. That answer to your call, to adventure and journeying forth with mentors and allies, and facing your greatest fears, where you either die or your life as you know it will never be the same. And then you seize the sword, the insight, the treasure. The hero at that stage must put all celebrations aside to prepare for the final battle. The road back. The road back is the moment where the hero goes back to the ordinary world, where she must choose between her own personal objective and that of a higher cause. The reward? Your gift to the ordinary world? [sighs] That is the Holy Grail, the elixir.

What’s your elixir?

You know, my testimony is one of poverty. You know, you heard I grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. And let me tell you something about poverty: You’re invisible. Nobody sees the poor. You have access to nothing. You’re no one’s demographic. You know what my “a-ha” moment was? I had a memory when I was nine years old, and I remember my parents fighting in the middle of the night. It was so bad that I started screaming at the top of my lungs, and I couldn’t stop. My older sister Dianne told me to go in the house or people would hear me. I ran in the house. I ran to the bathroom, screaming still, just couldn’t stop. And got down on my knees, and closed my eyes, I put my hands together and said, “GOD! If you exist, if you love me, you’ll take me away from this life! Now I’m going to count to 10 and when I open my eyes, I want to be gone! You hear me?!” And I put my hands together and I was really believing it. “One!” And then I got to eight. “Nine! 10!” And I opened my eyes … and I was still there. But, He did take my life. He left me right there so when I gained vision, and strength, and forgiveness, I could remember what it means to be a child who was hungry. I could remember what it means to be in trauma. I could remember poverty, alcoholism. I could remember what it means to be a child who dreams and sees no physical manifestation of it. I could remember because I lived it! I was there! And that has been my biggest gift in serving.

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”

And you know what? In the words of Joseph Campbell, you have not even to risk the adventure alone, because the heroes of all time have gone before you. The labyrinth is fully known; you have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where you had thought to find an abomination, you shall find a god. And where you had thought to slay another, you shall slay yourself. And where you had thought to journey outward, you shall come to the center of your own existence. And where you had thought to be alone, you shall come to be with all the world.

Now, you know, I jumped out of a plane recently—lost my mind for half an hour. But, you know, when you’re flying up in the plane, you’re anticipating the jump, your heart is beating, you’re praying, you’re doing everything possible and then your instructor says, “It’s time.” And this is usually my Wakanda salute to my sisters, okay? [Puts both hands up in front of her and keeps them up for the remainder of the speech.] So, this is how I’m going to end it: when you put your legs outside of that plane, he tells you to “put your hands up, put your head back, and then you fall.” So with my hands up, what I’m saying is that on this day of your genesis, your leap, your commencement, your mark in your history, perhaps your elixir is simply this: that you can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people. Thank you.

Viola Davis: 'Go on and live!', Providence College - 2012

24 May 2012, Providence College, Rhode Island, USA

You know, when John Garrity [’73; PC associate professor of theatre arts] picked me up from the airport, I said, “Oh my goodness, I’m so nervous I’m going to be speaking in front of 1,200 people”, and he said, “Try a little bit more than that.”  And I thought, “NOOOO!!” 

But really, I am so honored to be here, to impart my infinite wisdom, and I mean that facetiously, at your birth, beginning, start, threshold, genesis, kickoff, launch, commencement.  And I have to say that the content of my speech would have sounded totally different ten years ago, pre-marriage, pre-baby, pre-the passing of my father, pre-midlife.  I would have made a lot of stuff up, and been very self- congratulatory and self-righteous about what a wonderfully dramatic speech I gave, but how I neither lived nor believed none of it.  Thank God this is not ten years ago.

So, what can I give you?  A long-time friend of mine, Leah Franklin, after a passionate, late- night discussion, inspired me with a powerful, honest quote, and I’ll try to do it in her voice: “Oh V, you know, nobody ever tells you that life sucks.  I mean the only people who are happy are 2-year-olds and 80-year-old billionaires.”  Now, I get the 2-year-olds but the 80-

Year-old billionaire I didn’t get.  Well maybe Hugh Hefner, but …. 

And for some reason that marinated in my head and the only image I had was from the movie, The Exorcist. You know when Ellen Burstyn comes home late to find her assistant frantic, her assistant then whisks her upstairs to her pre-teen daughter Reagan’s room, played by Linda Blair. The room is freezing, dark, and Reagan, who is not really Reagan, but a demon, tied to a bed, covered with scars, breathing heavily, the room is really cold… and the assistant says, “I wasn’t going to bother you with this, but I thought you had to see it.”  She raises Reagan’s nightgown and on her abdomen, two words had been scratched: “Help me.”  And I thought, “That is such a great metaphor for life.”

I’m going to hit you with something deep.  You know, your authentic self is constantly trapped under the weight of the most negative forces in this world.  And it will be an everyday battle. You know, sometimes I felt, and you will feel, that who you are is hidden away like a piece of really great jewelry that you keep in a box, and you only take it out during special occasions.  Yet your everyday persona is a type of demonic possession.  But the demons aren’t gargoyles or red-faced men with horns, but everyone else’s dreams, desires, definitions of success, greed, the pursuit of personality instead of character, the exchange of love and family, for money and possessions, entitlement with no sense of responsibility, and the most frightening demon of all, lack of purpose.

If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be.  Perhaps I’d never asked myself whether I really wanted to become whatever everyone else seems to want to become.  Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all.  You see the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.  Now I have only been able to slay dragons when I have kept these two important facts in sharp focus, because at some point in life, it will indeed suck.  Loss of a loved one, health issues, marriage, children, loss of passion, the discovery that what you thought you wanted in life … you don’t.  You veer off course, but all that while, that purpose, that thing that you were specifically, divinely made for will be looming in front of you. 

You know when I was 42, I was present at the passing of my father, and I remember the hospice worker telling my mom that he was very, very sick, and the only reason he was holding on was because he needed permission to go.  She had to tell him and she couldn’t.  Now, my vision of what I wanted to become and how I wanted to make a mark involved the musty, 1,200-seat theatres of New York City and the big screen.  I wanted to be an artist.  I had no vision of that 42-year-old woman at hospice, telling her dad to move on.  And here I was, with him desperately reaching out, clinging for life, and telling him “Go.” 

At 38, I got married in a white dress.  I thought never in my life will I get married.  I had dreams before the ceremony of taking an elevator to the 38th-floor of a building and stepping in and looking at me, and not the me of 38, but the me in my 20s.  Only the 20-year-old me was standing there, dead, zombie. Someone told me, “Well, marriage is like a death…you die to yourself.”  And there I was the next day, reciting those vows with great joy.

And children, no images of being a 46-year-old mother with a 2-year-old child entered the realms of my imagination.  Yet once again, here I am, facilitating a life, guiding with the knowledge that I cannot protect, but only love.  Stumbling at times, yelling internally, “Help me”, happy, disillusioned, exhausted, fulfilled, knowing that I am giving all I am, all I really am, to this life.  It’s said that humans are the only creatures that stay at their mother’s bosoms the longest.  Perhaps that’s why when we are thrust into the world, we flail and thrash, looking for a sanctuary, answers, to be saved.  The good news is that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, and as for the demons…you exorcise them.  How? To those who say, “What is my purpose?” I say, “You know.”  And to those who know, I say, “Jump!” 

The people, the heroes in our life have gone before us, the labyrinth is fully known and we’ve only to follow the thread of the hero path.  And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find God, and where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves, and where we thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. 

And hey, you asked an actor to give your commencement speech, so, you know, the actor, the imagination, the flair, just goes wild. So the only thing once again churning through my head was a monologue from George C. Wolf’s The Colored Museum, and the character’s name is Topsy.  They say it’s the most overdone monologue in the world.  I say it can never be overdone, because the message is eternal.  And Topsy talks about a function she went to one night, way uptown. 

And baby, when I say uptown, I mean way, way , way , way, way, way, WAY uptown.  Somewhere between 125th street and infinity.  Inside was the largest gathering of black, Negro, colored Americans you’d ever want to see.  Over in one corner you got Nat Turner sipping champagne out of Eartha Kitts’ slipper.  Over in another corner you got Burt Williams and Malcolm X discussing existentialism as it relates to the shuffle ball change.  Girl, Aunt Jemima and Angela Davis was in the kitchen sharing a plate of greens and just going off about South Africa.  And then Fats sat down and started to work them 88s. And then Stevie joined in, and Miles, and Duke, and Ella, and Jimmy, and Charlie, and Sly, and Lightning, and Count, and Louie, and everybody joined in.  And I tell you, they were all up there dancing to the rhythm of one beat, dancing to the rhythm of their own definition, celebrating in their cultural madness.… And then the floor started to shake, and the walls started to move, and before anyone knew what was happening, the entire room lifted up off of the ground, defying logic and limitations and just went a-spinning and a-spinning and a-spinning until it just disappeared inside of my head. 

That’s right girl, there’s a party going on inside here.  That’s why when I walk down the street my hips just sashay all over the place, ’cuz I’m dancing to the music of the madness in me.  And whereas I used to jump into a rage whenever anyone tried to deny who I was, now all I do is give attitude, quicker than light, and go on about the business of me because I’m dancing to the madness in me.  And here, all this time I’d been thinking we gave up our drums, but no, we still got them.  I know I got mine. They here, in my speech, my walk, my hair, my God, my smile, my eyes and everything I need to get over this world is inside here, connecting me to everybody and everything that ever was.  So honey, don’t try to label or define me because I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago.  I’m all of that and then some.  And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it. 

To the 1,200 heroes of Providence College, your commencement begins with the call to adventure and it comes full circle with your freedom to live, so I say, “Go on and live.”  Thank you so much. I am so honored to be here at this time.