LEWIS HAMILTON
“We limit ourselves the majority of the time. And where it really hit me hard is: We should never have to dim our light in order to make others feel… If anything, we should shine as bright as we can to liberate others to do the same. I live my life by that quote. For so long in my life, I felt like I was dimming my light because I felt uncomfortable. When I was at school, I was dyslexic and struggling like hell. And one of the only few black kids in my school, being put in the lowest classes and never given a chance to progress or even helped to progress. Teachers were telling me, ‘You’re never going to be nothing.’ I remember being behind the shed, in tears, like ‘I’m not going to be anything’. And believing it for a split second. The most demotivating thing to hear, especially when you witness them doing the complete opposite with your white counterparts. I don’t actually hold any grudge against those people, because they fueled me up. There’s a lot of feelings that I suppressed at the time that I didn’t even realize that I suppressed, emotions and feelings that I had when I was younger and it all came up. There was a lot of the N-word going around. Go back to your country. Even today, I remember how terrifying it was. I really, really couldn’t understand it. It was like, are they talking to me? I’m from here. What do they mean? I could never understand it. When you’re being attacked, there’s this fear, there’s fear, and there’s anger as well because you want to get them back for the pain that they’re causing you. I never spoke about it to my parents. I didn’t speak about it to my mum, I didn’t think she’d understand. And my dad, I was probably too scared to tell my dad, because I didn’t want him to think I was a wuss. You know, I didn’t want him to think I couldn’t defend myself. I just remember a lot of times just being alone, just in tears in my room.
I love music so much. I would say music saves me every single day. People say ‘Lewis Hamilton’s doing music? Oh, I’m sure that’s going to suck.’ It’s only when they hear stuff that I do, then they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re actually pretty good.'” Vanity Fair