Do you choose love or fear? Inspiring graduation speech from Jim Carrey
2We all know Jim Carrey as a “funny guy”, but turns out that he is also a yogi! I don’t know whether or not he actually practices yoga, but his graduation speech was full of yogic ideas straight from the sutras! The points that he brings up are important and inspiring at any age and at any stage of one’s life and/or career, that is why we feature him this week.
I think what stuck the most with me is his point that you can fail at what you don’t love doing just as easily as you can at what you love doing, so wouldn’t it make sense to pursue what you love? Indeed. Which points did you like the most?
I thought it was weird and a little fluffy. The idea that your connection to others is the most valuable currency is nice and inspiring because it makes it sound like we can all be rich if we want to, but he doesn’t really elaborate on how to go about acquiring, saving, or spending that currency to get the things we want. And he doesn’t really go into any detail on why failing at what you love is better than failing at what you don’t love. I mean, his dad picked a job as an accountant presumably because he loved and wanted to support his family. It doesn’t really follow that he should have been the comedian.
I think it’s easy to be inspiring, but it’s hard to really give people what they need to take that inspiration and turn it into something tangible. Specifically, it’s easy as a really successful person for whom things appear to be generally working out to turn to people who are in a position of almost complete potential and almost no actualization and tell them that it’s all going to be ok if they just follow their dreams. That doesn’t tell them *how* to go about following their dreams and even if they have the courage to try while they’re young and vigorous, what should they do when they inevitably fail, as most people will? At that point they have nothing to connect themselves to the successful speaker with.
Personally I would have preferred if he had talked about how he handled the uncertainty and they confusion that define life in a state of unrealized potential. I would have liked if he talked about what happened when he said things that people didn’t like or want to hear. I think I would have been more inspired if a janitor had given the talk and he told me that he was happy and content with his life. Then I would have felt like he was on to something.
I know you asked for points we liked, but these are my honest thoughts.
This is beautiful and sounds straight from the Sutras.