Filmmaker, Screenwriter
Commencement speech at Compton College, 2021
Ava DuVernay addressed the 2021 Compton College graduates, highlighting life's unpredictability and the potency of sincerity. She acknowledged challenges, celebrated positive moments, and emphasized the transformative power of sincerity.10 top life lessons by Ava DuVernay
- Sincerity and Truth: Developing sincerity leads to a greater understanding of truth and authenticity in our actions and beliefs.
- Opportunity in Unpredictability: Life’s unpredictability presents opportunities for growth, self-reflection, and positive change.
- Acknowledging Challenges: Despite facing challenges like virtual learning and societal unrest, it is essential to acknowledge and remember the positive moments and personal growth during such times.
- Positive Reflection: Reflecting on personal experiences allows us to focus on positive aspects, such as spending quality time with loved ones and discovering our true desires.
- Social Progress Amid Adversity: Despite difficulties, recognizing achievements like increased voter participation and social justice movements highlights the potential for positive societal change.
- Transformative Power of Sincerity: Sincerity is emphasized as a transformative force, influencing personal beliefs, actions, and relationships.
- Diploma as Identity Reminder: The diploma symbolizes one’s identity and aspirations, serving as a constant reminder of personal growth and achievements.
- Embracing Life Fully: Encouragement to embrace life fully, taking risks, and savoring its sweetness even in the face of challenges or heartbreak.
- Power of Self-Discovery: Life’s challenges provide opportunities for self-discovery, allowing individuals to learn more about themselves and their desires.
- Delighting in Life’s Joys: Despite inevitable challenges, savoring and enjoying life’s pleasures is essential, as expressed through the metaphor of tasting the sweetness of apples falling around you.
Best quotes of Ava DuVernay‘s speech
"Power is lacking when sincerity is absent."""Life's challenges are also opportunities for self-discovery."
Commencement speech transcript
Greetings to each and every family member, loved one, esteemed faculty and staff and President of Compton College, Dr. Keith Curry. As a proud Compton native, I’m so pleased and honored to share a few words with you all on this momentous day in the lives of today’s graduates.
What a time that you, the graduating class of 2021, are all experiencing. When you look back at your college experience. What will you remember?
Will it be…spending your final year of college in a virtual classroom?
Will it be…isolation and economic insecurity in a global pandemic?
Will it be…the trauma of witnessing torture and murder of Black and Brown people in the streets of America transmitted on TV screens and social media platforms?
Will you remember the pain, the fear?
Probably. It shouldn’t be forgotten.
But will you also remember:
…the spending more time with the people that you love.
… doing something you never used to make time for?
… discovering what you really want out of this life?
In a year that brought so much pain… I hope that for you – as you embark on the next chapter of your life – that it also brought… Clarity. Perspective. And Hope.
Some good things have happened that are worthy of our hope. The most voter participation in 120 years… Historic election wins for women and people of color… Protection for LGBTQ employees’ rights… Health care and essential workers finally being hailed as the heroes they have always been. a society that is safely reopening post-pandemic … a social justice awakening for many and a social justice movement for many others.
If this time has taught us anything, it’s that life is unpredictable. I hope that what you’ve learned in an unpredictable year, is that with unpredictability comes opportunity. The opportunity to evaluate what is right in front of you. To focus on the most important things in each of our lives. To recalibrate your perspective. Your energy. Your intention. Your motive. Your purpose. To embrace the opportunity to be — sincere.
Very few people realize what power sincerity carries. To be genuine in your actions. However physically strong a person may be, they can be kept down by their falsehood; it never allows you to rise. Those who have done great things in life, in whatever walk of life it be, have done them by the power of truth, the power of sincerity. They believe in something. Truly. Sincerely. When that is lacking, power is lacking.
The more sincerity is developed, the greater share of truth you’ll have. Sincerity, truly feeling things deeply and expressing this genuinely and behaving righteously, is the bridge between yourself and what we want. Because who we are deep down is all that really matters.
So allow that diploma you’re receiving today to be a reminder of who you are and what you want. Let it be a guiding light that always brings you back to this day – when you were proud of yourself, when you were at the height of hope, and when you embraced all the parts of you – sincerely. Let all that goodness propel you forward as you journey on.
I’ll leave you with these words from a Native American writer named Louise Erdrich.
“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
I hope you taste this life and all that is ahead of you. And I hope it is delicious. My sincerest congratulations to you, class of 2021. Go out there and do your best.