Embracing otherness, embracing myself | Thandiwe Newton

Embracing otherness.

When I first heard this theme,

I thought, well, embracing otherness

is embracing myself.

And the journey to that place

of understanding and acceptance

has been an interesting one for me,

and it's given me an insight

into the whole notion of self,

which I think is worth sharing with you today.

We each have a self,

but I don't think that we're born with one.

You know how newborn babies

believe they're part of everything;

they're not separate?

Well that fundamental sense of oneness

is lost on us very quickly.

It's like that initial stage is over --

oneness: infancy,

unformed, primitive.

It's no longer valid or real.

What is real is separateness,

and at some point in early babyhood,

the idea of self

starts to form.

Our little portion of oneness is given a name,

is told all kinds of things about itself,

and these details,

opinions and ideas

become facts,

which go towards building ourselves,

our identity.

And that self becomes the vehicle

for navigating our social world.

But the self is a projection

based on other people's projections.

Is it who we really are?

Or who we really want to be, or should be?

So this whole interaction

with self and identity

was a very difficult one for me growing up.

The self that I attempted to take out into the world

was rejected over and over again.

And my panic

at not having a self that fit,

and the confusion that came

from my self being rejected,

created anxiety, shame

and hopelessness,

which kind of defined me for a long time.

But in retrospect,

the destruction of my self was so repetitive

that I started to see a pattern.

The self changed,

got affected, broken, destroyed,

but another one would evolve --

sometimes stronger,

sometimes hateful,

sometimes not wanting to be there at all.

The self was not constant.

And how many times

would my self have to die

before I realized

that it was never alive in the first place?

I grew up on the coast of England

in the '70s.

My dad is white from Cornwall,

and my mom is black from Zimbabwe.

Even the idea of us as a family

was challenging to most people.

But nature had its wicked way,

and brown babies were born.

But from about the age of five,

I was aware that I didn't fit.

I was the black atheist kid

in the all-white Catholic school run by nuns.

I was an anomaly,

and my self was rooting around for definition

and trying to plug in.

Because the self likes to fit,

to see itself replicated,

to belong.

That confirms its existence

and its importance.

And it is important.

It has an extremely important function.

Without it, we literally can't interface with others.

We can't hatch plans

and climb that stairway of popularity,

of success.

But my skin color wasn't right.

My hair wasn't right.

My history wasn't right.

My self became defined

by otherness,

which meant that, in that social world,

I didn't really exist.

And I was "other" before being anything else --

even before being a girl.

I was a noticeable nobody.

Another world was opening up

around this time:

performance and dancing.

That nagging dread of self-hood

didn't exist when I was dancing.

I'd literally lose myself.

And I was a really good dancer.

I would put

all my emotional expression

into my dancing.

I could be in the movement

in a way that I wasn't able to be

in my real life, in myself.

And at 16,

I stumbled across another opportunity,

and I earned my first acting role in a film.

I can hardly find the words

to describe the peace I felt

when I was acting.

My dysfunctional self

could actually plug in

to another self, not my own,

and it felt so good.

It was the first time that I existed

inside a fully-functioning self --

one that I controlled,

that I steered,

that I gave life to.

But the shooting day would end,

and I'd return

to my gnarly, awkward self.

By 19,

I was a fully-fledged movie actor,

but still searching for definition.

I applied to read anthropology

at university.

Dr. Phyllis Lee gave me my interview,

and she asked me, "How would you define race?"

Well, I thought I had the answer to that one,

and I said, "Skin color."

"So biology, genetics?" she said.

"Because, Thandie, that's not accurate.

Because there's actually more genetic difference

between a black Kenyan

and a black Ugandan

than there is between a black Kenyan

and, say, a white Norwegian.

Because we all stem from Africa.

So in Africa,

there's been more time

to create genetic diversity."

In other words,

race has no basis

in biological or scientific fact.

On the one hand, result.

Right?

On the other hand, my definition of self

just lost a huge chunk of its credibility.

But what was credible,

what is biological and scientific fact,

is that we all stem from Africa --

in fact, from a woman called Mitochondrial Eve

who lived 160,000 years ago.

And race is an illegitimate concept

which our selves have created

based on fear and ignorance.

Strangely, these revelations

didn't cure my low self-esteem,

that feeling of otherness.

My desire to disappear

was still very powerful.

I had a degree from Cambridge;

I had a thriving career,

but my self was a car crash,

and I wound up with bulimia

and on a therapist's couch.

And of course I did.

I still believed

my self was all I was.

I still valued self-worth

above all other worth,

and what was there to suggest otherwise?

We've created entire value systems

and a physical reality

to support the worth of self.

Look at the industry for self-image

and the jobs it creates,

the revenue it turns over.

We'd be right in assuming

that the self is an actual living thing.

But it's not. It's a projection

which our clever brains create

in order to cheat ourselves

from the reality of death.

But there is something

that can give the self

ultimate and infinite connection --

and that thing is oneness,

our essence.

The self's struggle

for authenticity and definition

will never end

unless it's connected to its creator --

to you and to me.

And that can happen with awareness --

awareness of the reality of oneness

and the projection of self-hood.

For a start, we can think about

all the times when we do lose ourselves.

It happens when I dance,

when I'm acting.

I'm earthed in my essence,

and my self is suspended.

In those moments,

I'm connected to everything --

the ground, the air,

the sounds, the energy from the audience.

All my senses are alert and alive

in much the same way as an infant might feel --

that feeling of oneness.

And when I'm acting a role,

I inhabit another self,

and I give it life for awhile,

because when the self is suspended

so is divisiveness

and judgment.

And I've played everything

from a vengeful ghost in the time of slavery

to Secretary of State in 2004.

And no matter how other

these selves might be,

they're all related in me.

And I honestly believe

the key to my success as an actor

and my progress as a person

has been the very lack of self

that used to make me feel

so anxious and insecure.

I always wondered

why I could feel others' pain so deeply,

why I could recognize

the somebody in the nobody.

It's because I didn't have a self to get in the way.

I thought I lacked substance,

and the fact that I could feel others'

meant that I had nothing of myself to feel.

The thing that was a source of shame

was actually a source of enlightenment.

And when I realized

and really understood

that my self is a projection and that it has a function,

a funny thing happened.

I stopped giving it so much authority.

I give it its due.

I take it to therapy.

I've become very familiar

with its dysfunctional behavior.

But I'm not ashamed of my self.

In fact, I respect my self

and its function.

And over time and with practice,

I've tried to live

more and more from my essence.

And if you can do that,

incredible things happen.

I was in Congo in February,

dancing and celebrating

with women who've survived

the destruction of their selves

in literally unthinkable ways --

destroyed because other brutalized, psychopathic selves

all over that beautiful land

are fueling our selves' addiction

to iPods, Pads, and bling,

which further disconnect ourselves

from ever feeling their pain,

their suffering,

their death.

Because, hey,

if we're all living in ourselves

and mistaking it for life,

then we're devaluing

and desensitizing life.

And in that disconnected state,

yeah, we can build factory farms with no windows,

destroy marine life

and use rape as a weapon of war.

So here's a note to self:

The cracks have started to show

in our constructed world,

and oceans will continue

to surge through the cracks,

and oil and blood,

rivers of it.

Crucially, we haven't been figuring out

how to live in oneness

with the Earth and every other living thing.

We've just been insanely trying to figure out

how to live with each other -- billions of each other.

Only we're not living with each other;

our crazy selves are living with each other

and perpetuating an epidemic

of disconnection.

Let's live with each other

and take it a breath at a time.

If we can get under that heavy self,

light a torch of awareness,

and find our essence,

our connection to the infinite

and every other living thing.

We knew it from the day we were born.

Let's not be freaked out

by our bountiful nothingness.

It's more a reality

than the ones our selves have created.

Imagine what kind of existence we can have

if we honor inevitable death of self,

appreciate the privilege of life

and marvel at what comes next.

Simple awareness is where it begins.

Thank you for listening.

(Applause)