Written for a Black Excellence Banquet at Agnes Scott College.
I’d like to apologize in advance for the words I’m about to say.
You probably didn’t expect to get read today as if you booked an appointment with your therapist, but I must persist.
I have identified a problem.
And it’s a problem I know all too well.
A problem that kept me mute,
fed me lies,
and built me a house in the shadows.
It has to do with the voices in our heads, the monsters underneath our beds…
I came here today to talk to the little girls that live inside of us.
The ones who see a mirror as an invitation to pick themselves apart as if they aren’t art, deserving of the gold frame that stares them in the face.
The ones who navigate obscenities,
dodging the pale stares that echo their difference,
leaving it hanging in the air for all to see.
I came to talk to the wounds inside of us.
We came to talk about excellence,
a state of being that is constant,
it does not arise at the check of a box or an ace of a test.
Excellent is who you are,
sketched into your very bones, watered by the state of your existence.
But I’m not sure if you get it.
I hear a voice that says, “Daughter, do you know who you are?”
Do you know that you were not made to take the cuts that wounded you and adopt them as fact? You were not made to spend hours, days, or years second-guessing your potential, bowing down to fear as if it were your master.
Do you know who you are?
The reality is that most of us don’t until it’s too late.
It’s why we tolerate offenses to the masterpiece of our image,
why we close the gate to our becoming,
succumbing to what could have been.
Which direction is your head held, Daughter?
Does it hang low beside the expectations you have for yourself?
Does it wobble from side to side, unsure of where it wants to go?
Or is it held high, facing the wind, sure of the direction it’s going in?
Which do you think is perfection?
I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the ladder.
Because if I am honest with myself,
I have sought perfection because the little girl in me needed security.
She wasn’t sure what she was good for,
so grades and accolades it was.
This was the same girl who filled stacks of notebooks with novels, movies, and big dreams, but was terrified to speak.
This was the same girl who longed for a voice but was content with staying behind the scenes.
The difference between excellence and perfection is fear.
Are you willing to stay excellent when you’re broken, in need of the hand of another?
Are you willing to be excellent when life slaps you in the face, and performance is no longer your friend?
Are you willing to be yourself when all else fails?
You are excellent, daughter.
Not for what you do, but because of who you are.
Everything that you have tried to change about yourself for the sake of others is why you’re excellent.
The way you came into this world,
bloodied and hollering for someone to hold you, is why you’re excellent.
Your head feels lighter when you realize you have nothing to prove. It’s already in you.
What I’m trying to say is that we can sing Black excellence as long as we want, but if we are not checking the root of our actions and the state of our hearts, we might just be lying. Because the stories we tell ourselves are just as important as the stories we make.
Excellence is a cup that’s handed to you every day.
It’s not something that we make.
I know this because none of us woke up and chose the size of our face.
We may not like it, but it was made for us, and as I look at you all today, I know it’s excellent.
So, go into the world, and be excellent.
Be who you were made to be.
Nothing more,
nothing less.
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