Robbins, who passed away earlier this year (in February) spoke those words in a commencement speech back in the 1900s, as the kids say. The year was 1974, and the speech was full of irreverence, backtalk, humor,... and wisdom.
Read it if you're inclined—it's so damned good (and definitely makes you want to read Robbins' novels).
So anyhow, live dangerously, live lovingly, believe in magic, use your imagination
And here's more from that speech:
"...you have no responsibility except to be yourself to the fullest limit of yourself, and to find out who you are. Or, perhaps I should say, to remember who you are. Because deep down in the secret velvet of your heart, far beyond your name and your address, each of you knows who you really are. And that being who is the true you cannot help but behave graciously to all other beings—because it is all other beings."
When I read something that reaches the "secret velvet of [my] heart," it feels like the divine has hooked me up! When something has me nodding and saying mmmmm to myself, then looking away to float off for a sec, I feel connected.
And I may be a broken record for saying this over and over, but I believe we all long to feel connected.
I feel like Robbins is saying here that it's through remembering who we are that we reconnect with what it is we've drifted off from—and have been reaching for ever since.
Not only do we long to feel connected, the crazy thing is that everything is already connected
We're here on this planet, souls having a physical experience.
But we're not a soul only while we're roaming around in these bodies—yet we're not a body only, either. We're body, mind, and soul together, a beautiful package—it's all connected and working together.
And what's more, we're connected to each other as a "human body," a collective. We think we're separate, but we're not, no matter how much we try to divide ourselves.
Even more than the human body connection, we're connected to all other life on this planet, as well as to this solar system, galaxy, and universe.
It's wild how not alone we actually are.
Robbins' speech speaks to me so deeply when he says the "true" us IS all other beings. This gives me a thrill. I get chills over this stuff.
Us and our divine wisdom
To clarify, though, I don't read something like this speech and then put someone, Tom Robbins or anyone, on anything remotely resembling a pedestal, hanging on their every word, believing they're not the same as me.
I've tried that approach and don't recommend it. It's simply asking too much of someone to expect them to exceed our inevitable human frailties and inconsistencies. It's much kinder and more generous to glean gems from a fellow human without asking them to deliver perfect behavior to us.
So instead, I'm reaching for those divine moments, those glimpses of connection.
Robbins, just like me and you and every one of us humans taking this planetary journey, is in possession of divine wisdom that we sometimes learn—and choose—to dispense. Some of us more often than others, some of us particularly beautifully, some of us now and then, some of us earlier than others, some much later, and some of us never quite figure out how to express in this life what's inside us.
But it's there, whether or not we express much of it. We're each carrying the divine, each of us a micro moment as part of this ever-expanding whole.
And remember
One more tidbit from Robbins' 1974 commencement speech:
"Remember that life is much too serious to take seriously. Remember to never forget how to play."
Fittingly, in the one of the obituaries I read, the author states that Robbins' motto was “joy in spite of everything.”
Which is all kinds of beautiful to me.
So dare to feel good, my shiny friend.
It's countercultural. It's responsible. It's caring. It's backtalk put to good use. It's irreverence at its best.
And it's good for the world.
As always, thanks for being on the other side of the screen today
I sure do appreciate you.
Shine on, my friend,
Coco
p.s. To talk in-depth about feeling connected instead of fractured, see my coaching calendar.
p.p.s. *These are "affiliate links"—as an Amazon affiliate I get a small commission when you shop using my links. So thank you if you choose to do that.
Hey, Shiny,
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Looking for your Feel Good in a Crazy World Starter Guide?
Sure, Ai is pretty good, and loads of people are turning to bots they've befriended, but it's still not a real person inside our device, no matter how much we want it to be.
So let's talk human to human, because we all need more than just answers—we need each other.
My aim in all my writing is to be as real, human, and fully alive as possible—and to share my very real, human, fully alive experience with my readers. I don't use AI for writing.
I love me some shiny things, but with all of AI's promises and assurances, I still choose the slow, hands-on, manual, analog, self-reliant, old-school, defiantly non-plagiarized path of writing—without asking any form of AI for ideas, inspiration, help, or even proofreading and grammar correction (because I've discovered it's not as good or "intuitive" as it claims to be at those, either).
[Also, as of 5/6/25 all photos are my own (not stock) unless otherwise stated.]
