What Bruce Lee can teach us about living fully Shannon Lee
Translator: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz
Bruce Lee is my father,
and he is best well-known
as a martial artist
and an action film star,
as I’m sure most of you know.
He died when I was four years old,
but I have a really deep memory of him.
I don’t have those long-form, storied
memories that you do when you’re older,
but the memory that I do have
is of the feeling of him.
I remember his energy,
his presence,
his love –
the safety of it,
the power of it,
the radiance of it.
And to me that memory
is very deep and personal.
And it is the memory of the quality
of his essential nature.
What a lot of people
don’t know about my father
is that he was also a philosopher.
He had a very ever-evolving philosophy
that he lived,
and it is that distinction –
that he lived his philosophy
and didn’t just espouse his philosophy –
that made him the force of nature
that he was, and still engages us today.
His wisdom has salvaged me
many times in my life:
when my brother died,
when my heart’s been broken,
whenever I have faced a challenge
to my mind, my body or my spirit,
the way that he expressed
himself has lifted me up.
And so I come to you today
not as a researcher
or an educator or a guru
or even a life coach,
but as a student of Bruce Lee –
as his daughter,
and also as a student of my own life.
So …
my big burning question that I want
you all to consider today is …
how are you?
Let me elaborate.
Whenever anyone would ask my mom
what my father was like,
she would say, “How he was
in front of the camera,
how you saw him in his films,
how you saw him in his interviews
was, in fact, exactly how he was.”
There were not multiple Bruce Lees.
There was not public Bruce Lee
and private Bruce Lee,
or teacher Bruce Lee and actor Bruce Lee
and family man Bruce Lee.
There was just one
unified, total Bruce Lee.
And that Bruce Lee had a very deep,
philosophical life practice
called self-actualization.
You’ve probably heard that term before.
It’s also known as how to be yourself
in the best way possible.
And that Bruce Lee said this:
“When I look around,
I always learn something
and that is to be always yourself,
and to express yourself
and have faith in yourself.
Don’t go out and find a successful
personality and duplicate it,
but rather start
from the very root of your being,
which is ‘How can I be me?'”
Many of us have done some soul-searching
or at least some incessant
thinking and worrying
about things like our purpose,
our passion, our impact,
our values
and our “reason for being.”
And that is sometimes considered our why.
Why am I here? Why this life?
What am I meant to be doing?
If we can grab a little piece
of that information,
it can help to ground us and root us,
and it can also point us in a direction,
and typically what it
points us to is our what.
What we manifest in the world,
what we have.
So our job, our home,
our hobbies and the like.
But there’s this little space
in between the why and the what
that often doesn’t get our full attention,
and that is our …
how.
How we get there
and the quality of that doing.
And I want to offer that this is actually
the most important part of the equation
when it comes to our personal growth,
our sense of wholeness
and even the long-term
impact that we make.
How is the action that bridges the gap
from the internal to the external.
And bridging the gap
is a very important concept
for martial artists like my father.
It’s how you get from point A to point B.
It’s how you get from here to your target
under the most vital of circumstances.
And so it makes all the difference.
Do you get there as an amateur?
Are you sloppy?
Are you wild, chaotic,
sometimes you get lucky,
sometimes you’re not lucky?
Or are you a warrior?
Are you confident?
Are you focused?
Are you skilled?
Are you intuitive?
Are you expressive, creative, aware?
So I want to talk to you today
about your how in your life.
So we do a little bit of –
we spend a little time
in existential crisis
over “Why am I here?
What am I meant to be doing?”
and we put a ton of effort
into our what –
our job, our career,
our partner that we have
and the hobbies we pursue.
But I want us to consider
that our how is the expression of our why
in every what,
whether we’re aware of it or not.
And so let’s take an example.
Let’s say that I have a value of kindness.
I’m all about kindness,
I feel really natural being kind,
I want to see more kindness in the world.
Is that kindness –
is that value in the result
or is it in the doing?
Are you trying to be kind
when it’s hard to be kind?
Can you do something
you don’t want to do kindly,
like fire someone?
Can you leave
a relationship with kindness?
If kindness is the value,
then are you trying to express it
in the whole spectrum of your doing –
and trying to do that?
Or are you just doing it when it’s easy?
So I want us to think
about that for a moment
and consider, you know, if we come home
and we’re kind and generous
and loving with our kids,
but then we go to work
and we are dismissive
and rude to our assistant
and we treat them like a subhuman,
then there is a fragmentation
in the beingness of our value.
And so I want us to consider
that how we are in our lives
is in fact how we are.
Meaning, if I am the kind of person
that walks down the street
and smiles at people
and says “hi” as I walk
past them on the sidewalk,
then that is how I am.
But if I’m also the kind of person
who makes fun of my brother
every chance that I get behind his back,
that is also the kind of person that I am.
And ultimately how we are
makes up the totality
of the picture of who we are.
And so I want to talk about
how do we unite these pieces
if we have any fragmentation.
I want to understand
how we embody ourselves
as our one and only self.
How do we actualize the whole self?
My father said, “All goals
apart from the means are an illusion.
There will never be means to ends –
only means.
And I am means.
I am what I started with
and when it is all over,
I will be all that is left.”
So you can employ a systematic approach
to training and practicing,
but you can’t employ
a systematic approach to actually living
because life is a process not a goal.
It is a means and not an end.
So “to obtain enlightenment” –
and I’m going to say self-actualize,
to be self-actualized
or to obtain wholeness –
“emphasis should fall
NOT on the cultivation
of the particular department” –
all of our whats –
“which then merges into the totality
of who we are as a total human being,
but rather, on the total human being
that then enters into and unites
those particular departments.”
You are your how.
You –
if you have some consciousness
and you want to bring some practice,
if you want to step
into that warrior space
around your how –
how you express
in every aspect of your life –
then you get to be the artist
of that expression.
You get to step into that and claim it
and exercise it
and bring that beingness
through your doingness
into your havingness.
And there you will find
the most profound of your growth,
you will find a sense of wholeness
and ultimately, you will leave
a lasting impact on your environment.
My father was his how.
He applied the execution of who he was
to every aspect of his life.
He was way more than
that kung fu guy from the ’70s.
He was someone who worked very hard
at actualizing his inner self
and expressing it out into the world.
And that laid the foundation
for what continues to inspire us,
engage us,
excite us
and attract us to him.
He was the embodied example
of living fully.
He said, “I am means.”
And there are only means.
So I’m going to ask you one more time.
Thank you for listening,
and please consider,
for you,
across the spectrum of your doing,
how are you?
Thank you.
(Applause)