Will

by Will Smith

I began to see the personality of the Big She as an instructive embodiment of the flow of life. I realized that if I am to enjoy her beauty and her bounty—and avoid being destroyed by her—she demands that I’m fully attuned, attentive, and committed to understanding her. I settled into the acceptance of my powerlessness, which strangely liberated me.

“Surrender” had always been a negative word for me—it meant losing or failing or giving up. But my burgeoning relationship with the ocean was exposing that my sense of control was actually an illusion. Surrender transformed from a weakness word to an infinite power concept. I had had a bias toward action—thrusting, pushing, striving, struggling, doing—and I began to realize that their opposites were equally as powerful—inaction, receptiveness, acceptance, non-resistance, being. Stopping was equally as powerful as going; resting was equally as powerful as training; silence was equally as powerful as talking.

Letting go was equally as powerful as grasping. “Surrender” to me no longer meant defeat—it was now an equally powerful tool of manifestation. Losing could be equal to winning in terms of my growth and development. I began to understand a perplexing phrase that Gigi used to use: “Let go and let God.” That had always seemed wrong to me. It felt like absolving yourself of your responsibilities, like something that people say when they’re too lazy to do what’s necessary to build the life they want. But all of a sudden, it took on new and magical meaning. There is an energy that’s at work while you’re asleep—the energy that fires the sun, that moves the ocean, that beats your heart. You don’t have to do everything; in fact, most ...

The Great River is going to do 99 percent of the work—your 1 percent is to study it, to understand it, to respect its power, and creatively dance within its currents and its laws. Act when the universe is open, and rest when she’s closed.

“If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need #1 movies to feel good about myself. If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need hit records to feel worthy of love. If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need Jada or anybody else to validate me. If I’m this beautiful, and I have this internal sanctuary I can always return to, then I don’t need anyone to approve of me. I approve of me. I am enough.” This was my first tiny taste of freedom. An invisible yoke had been lifted from my neck. All of my needing and grasping and clinging and lusting and demanding and maneuvering and reaching and craving—all of the insatiable desires that had kept me on my hamster wheel of misery were falling away. I no longer needed to chase the proverbial carrot on the stick. I wasn’t starving anymore. In my fifty-plus years on this planet, this is the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.

And at some point, just before sunrise, I noticed it: silence. My inner roommates had stopped talking. It was euphoric. Mother let me bathe in the peace of my inner quietude for about forty minutes. Then, without words she conveyed why I needed to stop talking: In essence, she told me I should be still, and I should be quiet, in order to better observe and understand the people and circumstances around me. She had watched me batter myself for so many years trying to impose my Will on the world. Her point was, if I stopped talking and thinking so much, I could see and sense the universal tides and I could align my energies to them and achieve twice as much with half as much effort. I heard an echo of Gigi’s words to me so many years before: “You know, if you stopped talking so much, maybe you could see some of those hits coming.” Minimizing my talking became my practice for maximizing my awareness. I had always seen the world as my battlefield; I now understood that the true combat zone was my mind.

On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross; The Tibetan Book ofLiving and Dying by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche; Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying lays out the most critical tenets to supporting and soothing the transition of a dying loved one. The first idea that jumped off the page for me was that a dying person often needs “permission to die.” The book posits that sometimes a dying person will fight and struggle to stay alive if they don’t have the sense that you are going to be OK without them. This can create horrific and painful final days. In order for our loved one to let go and die peacefully, they need to be explicitly reassured that we’re going to be OK after they are gone, that they did a great job with their life, and that we can handle it from here.

Rinpoche states, “A dying person most needs to be shown as unconditional a love as possible, released from all expectations.” These concepts crystalized the mission in my mind. I was going to put aside all of my agendas, traumas, questions, and direct my full energies toward the most compassionate and merciful transition that I could tender.

“Hey, Dad,” I said nervously. “You did good.” “What you mean?” he asked. “With your life.” I don’t think he was expecting to hear that. He took a pull of his Tareyton 100, turned his eyes back to the TV. He didn’t seem like he was ready to go there just yet. But I was. “I’m sayin’ you did great with your life. And when you’re ready to go, I want you to know that it’s OK. You raised me well. And I got it from here. I’m gonna take care of everybody you love.”

I came to see him every week for the next month and a half. There is something strangely clarifying and cleansing about looking into the eyes of someone who has accepted their pending death. The awareness of death bestows profundity and clears all the bullshit out of the way.

The finality of it all makes every moment feel infinitely significant.

Every hello felt like a gift from God. We were both overwhelmed with gratitude that we got to see each other one more time. And then, every goodbye was complete and perfect because we were saying goodbye with the full knowledge that this might be our last. Every laugh, every story takes on weight and meaning in that simple fact. Death has a way of transforming the mundane into the magical. Hellos and goodbyes should be that way in our everyday lives because the reality is tomorrow is not promised. I began to embrace every hello with gratitude and to never take a g...

About ten days later, I was on the set of Bright, a Netflix fantasy action cop film directed by David Ayer. We were shooting in downtown Los Angeles. Joel Edgerton, my costar, was behind the wheel of our patrol car; he was my partner in the movie. David Ayer approaches the window. “Bro, you need to call your father immediately,” he says softly. “It’s an emergency.” Even when you’re expecting these phone calls, it doesn’t make it less jarring. My heart was racing. I dialed Daddio’s cell. He answered. “Hey, man.” “Hey, Daddio, what’s up?” “I think it’s tonight,” he said. His words hit me like a thousand volts. “OK,” I said calmly. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying had stressed the importance of making a calm space for the transition of loved ones. “Do you want to FaceTime?” I asked. “Yeah. But shit, I don’t know how to do that …” “I got you—I’ll FaceTime you,” I said. “You just have to answer.” “Ellen, come do this FaceTime thing, Will about to call …,” he yelled to my sister who had just arrived. My cousin Ricky, a Philadelphia fireman who had been caring for Daddio, is holding the phone. It’s 2:00 a.m. in an empty downtown LA parking lot. I stand under the brightest streetlight I can find. I want him to be able to see me. We simply look at each other. Twenty minutes of silence. Finally, I hear my sister Ellen in the background whisper to Daddio, “Dad—you’re just looking. You don’t have anything you want to say to Will?” Daddio searches for one last piece of wisdom. One ...

The end of a film is similar to the punch line of a joke—you want the meaning to erupt in the hearts and minds of the audience. Imagine beginning to tell a joke without knowing the punch line.

Daddio needed to know that our lives were better because he was here. He wanted to be reassured that in spite of all of his shortcomings and fumbles and mistakes, that in the net analysis his assets outweighed his liabilities, and his life had been valuable.

I got my first true glimpse into the secret of “the Smile.” I had held a miscomprehension around the physics of ultimate happiness. I had thought that I could gain and win and achieve and conquer and acquire and succeed my way to love and happiness. Eight consecutive number one hit movies, thirty million records, four Grammys, and hundreds of millions of dollars makes you happy, right? Makes people love you, right? The fundamental flaw of this theory is the belief that “the Smile” comes from outside, that it is acquired or achieved from external sources or conditions. That someone will love you so much, they will adore you so deeply and thoroughly, that they will fill you with the bliss of “the Smile.” Spoiler alert: There are no relationships, careers, or houses with a name that can fill the hole. There is nothing that you can receive from the material world that will create inner peace or fulfilment. The truth is, “the Smile” is generated through output. It’s not something you get, it’s something you cultivate through giving. In the end, it will not matter one single bit how well they loved you—you will only gain “the Smile” based on how well you loved them.

The physics of love and happiness are counterintuitive. As long as we are stuck in the need to receive—in the cycle of grasping and clinging and demanding that people and the world around us meet our needs—we will be locked into disappointment, anger, and misery. The sweet paradox is being fulfilled by giving, that your output precipitates the input—giving and receiving become simultaneous. To love and to be loved is the highest human reward and ecstasy. Allowing the best within you to serve and unleash the best within others is the most intense of human pleasures. When I say “love,” I mean discovering, cultivating, and sharing your unique gifts for the purpose of uplifting and empowering your loved ones. “The Smile” is a combination of the recognition of the unique treasure within yourself and the realization that the treasure is multiplied through giving it away. Everyone is struggling. Everyone is having a hard time. Life can be brutal, chaotic, confusing, and excruciating. Our hearts are starving. Loving, giving, helping, serving, protecting, nourishing, empowering, and forgiving are the secrets of “the Smile.” Can you imagine what it would feel like if someone loved you, gave you all you needed, helped you, served you, protected you, nourished you, empowered you, and forgave you? For many of us, the answer to that question is no. But what Gigi knew, and what Nelson Mandela knew, what Muhammad Ali knew—and what Daddio knew in his final moments—is that you must give it ...

Births, weddings, and funerals have a way of sifting the gold out of the dirt and the rocks. Daddio’s death served as a wake-up call for me. As Jada and I sat at his funeral, I became chillingly aware of the fact that one day, one of us would be saying goodbye to the other, and I questioned: What did I want our ending to be?

We came to see our marriage as a spiritual discipline—what Bhakti Tirtha Swami called the ultimate “school of love.” This relationship is our classroom—we are learning to cultivate care, concern, and compassion in the most intimate and difficult of circumstances. There are few things in life more challenging than being married. The intimacy tends to stir up and expose our most poisonous inner energies. If we can learn to love here, we can love anywhere. The question is, can we love each other unconditionally, or is our love contingent upon the other person acting exactly as we need them to? It’s easy to “love” somebody when they do what you want them to do, exactly how you want them to do it. But how do you behave when they step outside of your picture? How do you treat them when they hurt you? Those are the times that determine whether or not or not you actually love somebody. Love is hard. It takes enormous courage to open a wounded heart over and over again to the possibility of love’s bliss. Like Charlie Mack always says, “Scared money can’t make no money.” Love demands bravery, a willingness to risk it all. But bravery does not mean the absence of fear. Bravery is learning to continue forward even when you’re terrified. Jada and I agreed that we would ride together for this lifetime, no matter what.

So why are you heli bungee jumping over the Grand Canyon? When I first heard that question out loud, I thought, It’s obvious! I’m in the wicked clutches of an anaconda of a midlife crisis. But I was live on YouTube, so I couldn’t say that. Here’s what I actually said: “I’ve had an interesting relationship with fear my whole life. I’ve traversed the spectrum of fear reactions, from complete debilitation through inspiration and sometimes slipping into outright foolishness. But when the idea of heli bungee jumping over the Grand Canyon came up, I wasn’t debilitated, and I sure wasn’t inspired—all I could think was, This shit is stupid.”

I’ve realized that for some reason, God placed the most beautiful things in life on the other side of our worst terrors. If we are not willing to stand in the face of the things that most deeply unnerve us, and then step across the invisible line into the land of dread, then we won’t get to experience the best that life has to offer. So I’ve been making a conscious effort to attack all the things that I’m scared of. And this is scary. When Yes Theory challenged me to heli bungee, my heart jumped. And I’ve learned to recognize that feeling as a signal that the great gift has presented itself. As soon as my heart jumps, I’m in—I gotta do it. But I also can’t be outdone, so when Yes Theory said “Heli bungee,” I added, “Over the Grand Canyon … and on my 50th birthday.”