What Dennis Quaid's Rant Taught Me

Recently, I saw a video of Dennis Quaid losing his patience whilst on set and verbally abusing all those in his line of fire. I laughed uncontrollably whilst holding a shocked face, and after having watched it the second time around, I came to the realization of something.

My entire life, I have always been the quiet one. I have been Peter Pan’s shadow, not Peter Pan himself. I never took risks. I sat there content in watching people take risks for me, people shaping my pathway through life. And none of it mattered so long as I was out of everyone’s way, so long as I remained in my shell, my comfort zone.

This was the way until I started attending university. I never saw myself as a future academic. I always thought that I would fall into some subliminal career, like video game design, wherein the only place I exist would be in the credits, the shadows again. Either that or tattooing, also the shadows, because all I would do is draw on people watch from afar as others fell in awe on that person’s skin, far from me, with only a name to represent me, and if I were lucky, a business car. But university changed that.

University gave me a voice. It powered my anger. It fueled me. Whenever something unprofessional would happen, I found myself commenting on it not just through text, which is the way I lived my life earlier because of my obsession with networking, but through voice. I was a decent public speaker in my youth, but entering the academic world gave my public speaking a powerful surge. Something inside of me came to life and cast me out of the shadows. It cast me into vulnerability, into the spotlight, a place that I had feared my entire life prior to entering this academic space, and since then there has been no going back.

I have been vocalizing all that irritates me. I have been standing up to myself, seeking justice where it is due. One particular instance is when one of my aunties had sought out to avenge my sister on her choice of preferring a spouse from another race. Upon other devastating phrases, she screamed “love isn’t about loving someone, it is about making a child that looks like you so that they won’t be bullied. You have to think of what your children will look like before you marry!” My blood boiled. I could no longer contain myself. “how,” I retorted, after my father stuck up for her, “can any of you sit here and listen to this? How do you all expect me to sit here with you after I attend classes which preach about diversity? How am I meant to grow as an educator and love others when all you do is tell me to hate everyone?” It was pathetic. Everyone had let me down at that moment, particularly my younger cousins who felt the same way that I did but dared not speak about it.

What was important was that I had a voice. I grew out of their expectations, I grew out of their nonsense and developed my own self, developed a character that would take a stand when they feel something is wrong, a character that would give voice to the voiceless. Had I not spoken at that moment in time, I would have sat there appearing to fall into agreement with the ridiculous nonsense that my aunt had released, and the hopes of my sister or myself or anyone in that room alike would have fallen into an abyss of hatred that my aunt was attempting to cast it into. By standing up for myself and for the right of all human beings at that moment, I had put a plug into that abyss, ensuring that nobody, while I was around, would fall into that again.

In Dennis Quaid’s rant, he screams “I am doing my job, here. I am a pro. This is the most unprofessional set I have ever been on. […] This is garbage!” I came to the realization, upon hearing that, that fighting for what you believe in is the only way to survive. He could have continued sitting where he is on the set. He could have continued to fall victim to the unprofessionalism that he was faced with, but after having been in a certain professional space, he would not settle for less, and right he is for not doing that.

He has grown. Not physically, but mentally. His inner horizons had been stretched. He has been through things that he probably had not anticipated, and then he is thrown into a situation where regression was imminent. That scenario relates to the scenario I went through, when my aunt had her racist rumble. I have been growing in all these six years in an academic environment, what good would I do myself if I had left myself in a place where the only choice I had was to regress and comply? None.

Be the Dennis Quaid in your life. Embody that change. Do not let anything tie you down. Once you are filled with the helium of growth, let go, and fly. Only come down to inform others, and then fly off with them as well. Growth is a splendid thing, and once you feed on it, ignorance becomes easier to spot, and much easier to evade.