Lena Waithe, Remarks as Delivered

Live at Radio City Music Hall

First of all, I’d like to thank President Beilock and the Barnard College Board of Trustees, which happens to include my phenomenal lawyer, Nina Shaw, thank you for inviting me here to speak to you all today. I am both honored and grateful for this wonderful opportunity.

I’d also like to take a moment and thank the faculty, College leadership, parents, families, and of course the reason why we are all here — our amazing graduates.

I was going to say give yourselves a round of applause, but y’all did it!

I know everybody’s ready to go eat, drink, and be merry, so I promise I won’t keep you for too long.

I must inform you that this is my very first commencement speech. So thank you for that. And what a way to do it: Radio City Music Hall and on my 39th birthday. Not a bad way to start.

But the reason why you guys are my first is because I’ve never had the desire to write one of these speeches.

And once I sat down to write it — I saw why. It can be a very daunting task. To speak to a large room full of a graduating class and their friends and family and give words of wisdom or helpful advice can be a little tough. I didn’t even know where to begin. So I decided to watch a bunch of commencement speeches. And I watched a ton. A lot of smart and accomplished people did a great job of telling harrowing stories about how many people in their lives told them they would never amount to anything — and of course they amounted to a lot. They didn’t do anything by the book, so of course that led to them to large amounts of success, and they usually ended their speeches by saying, “Do you — never follow rules, but instead go out there and write your own.”

I sat there thinking, Wow, this is a lot of great advice. I felt empowered. I felt revved up. I felt like there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish if I just put my mind to it.

I also felt compelled to end my speech the way a lot of commencement speeches ended — with me telling you to go out there and follow your dreams and conquer the world.

But then I realized maybe the world doesn’t need conquering, and if you follow your dreams long enough, eventually you’ll probably catch them. So what happens when your dream becomes your reality? When it’s no longer a fantasy in your head but a job that you don’t always want to do — then what?

So today I want to talk to you about success and failure and those pesky dreams. The ones that haunt us. The ones that elude us — and the scariest dreams of all, the ones that come true.

I’m assuming today is a dream come true for a lot of you — and if not, at least it’s a dream come true for your parents. Which can still be quite satisfying.

But now that this dream has been realized, you’re now going off into the world to dream bigger dreams and have more successes. And because we live in a capitalist society, we are taught from birth that success usually means having a large home, a couple cars, and a college degree. Well done on the last one.

We also live in a society where capital doesn’t always mean commerce. In the new age of social media, it also means eyeballs, attention, likes, views. And the more you have, the more successful you are.

But at what cost? What are you willing to do or who are you willing to become in order to attain that success? That’s a question I can’t answer for you in this speech. You’ll have to go out in the world and figure that out for yourself.

What I’d like for you to do is create your own definition of success. Don’t let society tell you what it has to be. I often think that we spend our lives chasing society’s idea of success — so much so, that when we finally reach it, we wonder why we find ourselves feeling empty and alone.

Some people think that if you find success, you find happiness, but those two things aren’t always mutually exclusive.

At 33, I became the first Black woman to be nominated and win an Emmy for outstanding writing in a comedy series for an episode of Master of None entitled “Thanksgiving.” It was a retelling of my own coming-out story. It was a big moment for me and my industry — I would later grace the cover of Vanity Fair, film my first movie with Steven Spielberg, and launch my own hourlong series on Showtime called The Chi, which is currently in its sixth season. We’ll be back soon, stay tuned. Now I could stand here and say I had all the success in the world, and when I went home at night I was miserable, but the truth is — that wasn’t the case. I was pretty happy.

Things were good for a while, but eventually the bloom falls off the rose. I wrote a movie that people wished had a different ending, I put my foot in my mouth more than once, and I quickly realized I didn’t know how to exist as this ideal icon everyone wanted me to be. It took me a while to realize there’s no such thing. You see, people aren’t meant to live on pedestals. The air up there is way too thin, and I found it really hard to breathe.

Even though I was living the dream, there were many times I just wanted to go back to the way things were. Back when there wasn’t so much pressure for me to always get things right. When all my friendships were intact. Back when I didn’t feel the need to always be perfect. See, that’s the thing about success — you spend your life chasing it, but once you get it, you start to see the world through different eyes. It’s hard for you to relate to people you once did, you can’t trust everybody, and you start to feel isolated and alone. But you’re successful!

And people admire and love successful people. It means you’ve cracked the code. You’ve found the key to life, but you’re really just trying to stay sane and keep the world from hating you. Which often can be an impossible task.

Many people dream about being successful one day, so when we see someone else achieve that goal, we want them to exist in that success in the same way we would if we were them. The “right” way. But of course we all know there’s no right or wrong way to be successful. It’s a personal journey we all have to take. So when you find your version of success, please try to enjoy it — because the moment is fleeting, and the judgment is inevitable.

What I worry about for the graduating class of 2023 is that the world truly has become a stage. You, just like me, probably feel a ton of pressure to always say the right thing, to always do the right thing, and you never want to offend anyone. But if you decide to live your life for other people — especially folks you’ll never meet — you will spend your entire life feeling stifled, anxious, and unable to be yourself, because no one wants to be disliked. But I’d rather you be disliked by some for being yourself than be liked by everybody for being a person that doesn’t even exist.

It’s not a way to live. We all fall down. We all wish we could go back in time and do things differently.

But I’ve learned that not always getting things right is what led me to this podium today.

It’s easy to point out my successes and admire me because of the things I’ve accomplished, but I’d rather you embrace me for the moments when I fell down and got things wrong, because it’s those things that made me who I am. It’s not about where you stand during times of triumph but how you bounce back from trials and tribulations.

Here’s what I know to be true: In your life, you will know success, and you will know failure. They are both equally important to your growth as a human being.

And if you have a long season of failure, don’t worry, success is on the way. And if you have a long run of successes, you should watch your step because chances are, you’re gonna stumble at some point. It is called balance. Do not chase one while trying to run away from the other. You must embrace both, with open arms if you can stomach it.

So, as I bring my first commencement speech to a close, I hope you remember that having empathy for yourself and others is a great way to walk through the world. Because everyone is either experiencing a success they don’t quite know how to exist in or a failure they are still trying to survive.

And with that, I want to say congratulations on making it to this day. See, I’m sure there were a lot of successes and failures along the way. But you made it. You’re still here, and you’re surrounded by so many people that love you and have your back, and in this crazy world, that’s all that really matters.

Now, let’s go eat, and drink, and for some, maybe smoke, and be very merry. Congratulations, Class of 2023! Thank you so much for having me.