Thandie Newton: Embracing otherness, embracing myself

A TED Presentation by Thandie Newton, an actress who discussed her story of growing up in two distinct cultures; her mom is black from Zimbabwe and her dad white from Cornwall, she grew up in England in the 70’s. By the age of five she knew she didn’t fit “she said she was a black atheists kid in and all white catholic school run by nuns” and her self began looking for definition, and she said, “self likes to fit", in other words she just wanted to fit in with others.

Thandie was in a place where she felt she didn’t exist that she was in otherness, and she struggled to find self, another world opened up for her, performing and dancing, she used dancing to lose herself, she stated “I wasn’t able to be in real life, in myself”. She began acting at the age of 16, she felt peace in acting because she was able to lose herself in her roles and become in another self and not her own. This gave her a sense of belonging, which she thought she was fully functioning in self; the one she controlled, and she gave life to it. By the age of 19 she was a full-fledged actress, but still searching for definition.

Thandie didn’t know where she belong in society, what race embraced her. She said, “Race is an illegitimate concept which our selves have created based on fear and ignorance”. Even though she understood this fact, it didn’t help cure her low self-esteem and her feeling of otherness. Thandie suffered from bulimia and ended up seeing a psychiatrist. The world is made to believe you have to be a certain way to fit into society; you need to have a certain self-image, so we create in our minds a self-image. Thandie created self when she danced, or she got a role in a movie, she lost herself in her role, until it was over and back to feeling of nothingness.

We need to live in reality and appreciate who we are as one and not try to fit in to what other believe is the right way and except what and who we are in this world. Society makes us believe we are not the right color, size, or culture. Be one with yourself and don’t try to be in otherness, be yourself, who God created you to be.

http://www.ted.com/talks/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html