Jim Carrey's commencement speech
Jim Carrey knows what he’s talking about. I couldn’t stop thinking about his words — about the choices we make out of fear. By the end of the day, new insights clicked into place.
Here are the parts that resonated the most.
I used to believe that who I was ended at the edge of my skin, that I had been given this little vehicle called a body from which to experience creation. And though I couldn’t have asked for a sportier model, it was after all a loaner and would have to be returned. Then I learned that everything outside the vehicle was part of me too, and now I drive a convertible. Top down, wind in my hair.
There is no other way to live life full face forward. Like diving out of a plane with no gear. You know how it ends. Enjoy the fall.
You have given them the ability to walk behind the mind’s elaborate set decoration and to see that there’s a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that is going to eat you.
That may sound like no big deal, but many never learned that distinction. And they spend a great deal of their lives living in fight or flight response.
So many things we never do because we’re scared to even try.
Now fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality.
Everything except joy and love is made out of fear.
“Fear disguised as practicality”
What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect. So we never dare to ask the universe for it. I’m saying I’m the proof that you can ask the universe for it. Please. And if it doesn’t happen for you right away, it’s only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order.
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive.
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
It’s not the only thing he taught me though. I watched the effect of my father’s love and humor and how it altered the world around me.
As someone who’s done what you’re about to go and do, I can tell you from experience the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Because everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.
Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.
Life is a gift to you. It is for mining joy.
My soul is not contained within the limits of my body. My body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul. One unified field of nothing dancing for no particular reason, except maybe to comfort and entertain itself.
Think forward. Reset every second.
As that shift happens in you, you won’t be feeling the world, you’ll be felt by it. You’ll be embraced by it. Our eyes are not viewers. They’re also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is I’ll Never be Enough.
And after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices, love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.