We all come from different places, maybe we all have different accents, we, uh, have different hobbies, different backgrounds, whatever. But there's one thing that we have in common, that I know for sure, and that thing is that when we feel a great amount of joy, or a great amount of pain, we turn to music. That's why we're all at Hyde Park today.
And from talking to you so much, and from getting to know you, it's never been more apparent to me how difficult it is to feel okay about yourself in 2015. Real talk. I mean every single day we go online, and trust me, I love the internet,, okay? I love it. But every day we go online and we scroll through the highlight reel of other people’s awesome lives. But we don’t see the highlight reel of our awesome lives, all we see is the behind the scenes of our lives. We see every single moment from when we wake up and are like “oh God, not feeling my hair today: not gonna be a good day today for the hair”.
You see your doubts, you see your fears, you see your concerns. You’re the only one that’s inside your brain, feeling all of your anxieties and the voices that are telling you that you can’t be who you wanna be or that you’re not who you wanna be, or that you wanna be more like that other person over there. Let me tell you, people are mean to each other, but no voices are as mean as our own voices are to ourselves. Is it true or is it false? It’s true, right?
So if there’s one thing that you come away from this night remembering I want it to be this. Every day, when you look in the mirror and your mind is telling you all the things you’re not. If those things are: “you’re not cool enough”, “you’re not pretty enough”, “you’re not popular enough”, “you’re not successful enough”, “you’re not special”, “you’re not wanted”, “you’re not unique”.
Those are not the things you are not. Let me tell you the things you are not. “You are not somebody else’s opinion of you”. That’s what you’re not. “You are not going nowhere just because you are not where you want to be YET”. “You are not damaged goods just because you have made mistakes in your life”. Those are the things you’re not.
Let me tell you the things you are. Would you like to hear the things that you are? “You are your own definition of beautiful and worthwhile and no-one else’s definition”. “You are wiser, stronger and smarter because you made mistakes in your life, not damaged”. And lastly, London England, “you are someone who is probably standing here tonight, going through your own battles, fighting your own ghosts, trying to cover your own scars, stressing about your own stresses” but rather then wallowing in them, you got up, you put on an awesome outfit and now we’re all standing here together having the best time of our lives at a concert on a Saturday night.
I’ve realised that it’s not about being perfect, it’s not about feeling perfect. I-I think that, sometimes, it’s just about getting on with things and after a while you look around and realise that you’re happy today, and-and that’s all the matters. And I just want you to know that one thing I have learned in 25 years and I’m still learning is that: *if you get rained on, you walk through a bunch of storms, life is constantly coming at you, that doesn’t make YOU damaged, it makes you clean*.
And I think that, when I'll look back on this, it's gonna be one of the things that helps me get through a bad day; it's gonna be one of the things I'll think about when I'm lonely, or when I'm confused. THIS is going to be what I play back in my memory and I really, all that I could ever hope for is that you feel the same way about this night.