Jim Carrey walked to the podium at Maharishi University of Management’s 2014 commencement carrying a painting too large for most rooms, introduced as the funniest man on earth, and immediately looked out at a seated crowd and asked why they were sitting down. He had planned to milk the applause a little longer. But what followed the laughter was something the graduating class of 2014 almost certainly did not expect: a talk that moved between cosmic philosophy, a father’s failed accounting career, a Mustang bike won in a raffle, and a quietly devastating confession that the only person Jim Carrey had never managed to free was himself.
The lesson his father taught him without meaning to
Carrey’s father wanted to be a comedian. He did not believe it was possible, so he made what felt like the safe choice: a career as an accountant. When Carrey was twelve years old, his father was let go from that safe job, and the family spent years doing whatever they could to survive. Carrey drew the lesson plainly: ‘You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.’ He watched his father’s humor and warmth change the rooms he entered, and decided early that affecting people that way was worth his time. He called the mission he eventually built around it the Church of FFC, the Church of Freedom from Concern, and described it as his ministry.
The painting he brought with him was called ‘High Visibility.’ It took him thousands of hours to complete, weeks alone on a scaffolding, and when he finally finished, a friend suggested it would make a cool black-light painting. So he started over. He described the figures in it: a party host at the top who thinks unconsciousness is bliss and keeps offering bottles that empty you, a queen of diamonds who needs a king to build her house of cards, a hollow figure at the bottom who clings and begs not to be left behind. Better to have those characters on a canvas, he told the graduates, than living rent-free inside your own head.
Faith over hope, a second-grade substitute teacher, and an Irish prayer that worked
A substitute teacher from Ireland told Carrey’s second-grade class that she always prayed for what she wanted and promised something in return, and it always worked. A broke kid at the back of the classroom, Carrey went home and prayed for a bike, promising to recite the rosary every night in exchange. He broke the promise immediately. Two weeks later a brand-new Mustang bike with a banana seat and Easy Rider handlebars appeared at his house, won in a raffle a friend had entered his name in without his knowledge. He called this type of thing a pattern in his life: let the universe know what you want, work toward it, and let go of how it comes to pass.
He was careful about the word hope. ‘Hope is a beggar,’ he said. ‘Hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it.’
The painting propped against the lectern
The canvas stood near the podium through the entire address, large enough that Carrey suggested people move toward the front to get a proper look at it.
Carrey closed by asking the graduates to do one thing after they walked through the doors: choose love over fear, and never let fear turn them against their playful hearts. He thanked them, and the crowd responded the way crowds do when a comedian has also, somehow, been completely serious the whole time.
