00:00 I want to just admit that it was a little difficult to come up with something to toast to tonight.
00:05 The world feels like it is in absolute shambles and the shambles feel like they're all somehow
00:12 made by our own human doing. And when I look down between my thumb tips, everyone seems to just be
00:18 screaming at each other and everyone seems to know everything about how everyone else is doing it
00:24 wrong. And then when I find myself in spaces where it feels like there's actually time and space to
00:29 have conversations about what's happening in the world in a thoughtful way, no one seems to know
00:35 how to talk about anything. Which I totally understand and have such complete compassion for.
00:42 I too feel so confused, heartbroken, devastated. I feel rage. I feel deeply, deeply sad.
00:54 I want to do everything to help and I feel just as equally helpless. I remember early in the
01:00 pandemic this same feeling of panic and overwhelm started to bubble up and I began to spiral because
01:05 I'm a spiraler and I was thinking about all the millions of other things I should be doing in my
01:10 life to be a little bit more helpful. Like okay, is it too late to become a nurse or a biochemist?
01:17 Yes, brilliant, maybe now me, actor, academy award nominee, should be a biochemist. That feels right.
01:24 Yeah, I found myself in front of my bookshelf looking for clues and comfort and as I was
01:30 scanning the spines, these books, desperately searching for answers inside somebody else's
01:36 words, out of nowhere I all of a sudden just started weeping. Out of nowhere I just started
01:43 sobbing because in that very moment I had this profound realization that all of these authors,
01:51 all of these people, these human beings over the course of so many tragedies had taken the time
01:58 to do the work, to turn their ideas, their feelings, their heartbreak into an offering,
02:05 a book, to protect us at a time of devastation they didn't even know would come.
02:12 In her book, No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein says that it is not enough to merely resist,
02:19 to say no. Our historical moment demands more, a credible and inspiring yes,
02:27 one that sets a bold course for winning the fair and caring world we want and need.
02:34 Writers are yes makers, artists yes makers, educators, doctors, parents, children, biochemists,
02:42 astro-nuts, physicians, we are in a room full of yes makers and I too have to remember that I am
02:50 one in a world of many many more. I love this, that collectively imagining a yes we can build
02:58 towards is not only our responsibility but necessary for our survival. So in the spirit
03:05 of this I'd like to share with you all one of my favorite yeses. I think about it in moments like
03:12 this, a moment like we're in now when the overwhelmed can tip into helplessness or paralysis.
03:19 It's something one of my favorite authors and activists Adrienne Marie Brown once said
03:25 at a talk back when I asked her through tears, I'm always crying because I'm an actor,
03:30 I asked her what do you do when you feel like the change you want to make won't happen fast enough
03:38 or that you can't keep up with the speed in which destruction and tragedy is happening?
03:44 And she said, because she's brilliant, she said I have exactly the perfect antidote for you.
03:53 She said I think of Harriet Tubman, I think of this woman who brought enslaved people to freedom
04:03 from the south to the north over and over simply just by walking. Harriet who simply walked,
04:11 one woman who in the dark of the woods had nothing, only the light of the stars to guide her,
04:19 walked simply because she knew her people had to be free. So tonight I would like to raise a toast
04:28 to walking or moving forward however you are able into and through uncertainty.
04:36 I'd like to raise a toast to time and to the time it takes to have the deep courage to imagine and
04:45 believe there must be another way and then to move towards it, whether it to be the moon or
04:52 to writing the first or last page of a book or to the other side of freedom, to do something
04:58 towards collective justice and joy even if we are completely in the dark of what the outcome may be.
05:04 We are in a room full of beautiful, beautiful people with the imagination of a million yeses
05:13 or definitely at least 100 and I cheers to that, to you all, to what's next and when in doubt
05:23 I hope we can look to each other, look to the sky. Thank you so deeply for doing what you're doing.
05:31 I feel honored to be moving towards yes alongside of you all.
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