How Do You Not Let the Current Administration Depress You? Leon Gives the Best, Eloquent Response

Leon during the Q&A after the screening of, "Make America Black Again" at the Capital City Black Film Festival

At the Capital City Black Film Festival on August 31st in Austin, Texas, actor Leon Robinson (@JustLeon) screened his short film, "Make America Black Again," which he also co-wrote and co-directed.

The film perfectly sums up the current administration’s antics while mixing it up with political satire. After the screening, Leon sat down for a Q&A with Desirae Jones as well as taking questions from the audience (for which he did not set a time limit; taking every question from anyone who wanted to ask.) 

In the Q&A, Leon mentioned how he is a member of The Resistance, but that he doesn’t allow anything to bring him down, saying, “…I don’t have to wake up mad every day… Nothing is going to make me ruin my life and make me sad. I can be part of the resistance and also make fun of it. Laugh. Make people realize that we need to wake up but also be able to put a smile on their face at the same time.”

Desirae then interjected, “It was kind of crazy (Make America Black Again) and over the top but that’s really what we see every day with the current administration.” 

“I mean, I can’t imagine anything more over the top than Donald Trump,” Leon responded.

Then, after an audience member asked if he had any advice on how to not be depressed by current events, Leon eloquently stated, “The philosophy of being happy is not letting stress, for one thing -- not just ruin your life, but make you age and make you unhealthy -- is something that I stress [to people.] One of the things that I do is I find joy in the little things in life. There’s so much joy around so many things in life... Your family. Your kids. The fact that maybe you still have your parents. Someone you can talk to. You have a love in your life. The fact that, ‘I really need to go to the bathroom and I’m still at home before I have to leave the house and I can go.’ Little things like that just put a smile on your face — the movie that you love is on when you get home and you can relax and just have some leftovers from yesterday. The little things that we take for granted are the things that can keep us happy in our day to day lives, but we worry about these clouds that are over us constantly instead of looking down here and saying there’s so many reasons to be happy. — Every morning you wake up and you’re healthy, you should be happy. If you’re not healthy and you wake up, you should be happy. There’s so many reasons for us to take joy in this life, but we don’t concentrate on those things. We don’t look to see why we should be happy. We look at the glass being half empty instead of half full. I’ve been a glass half full guy my whole life — Even though things could have been better, they could have been worse… I still have this. I still have that. I’m not hungry. I still have food to eat. I would have liked to have gotten that part… but I’m still working. I still have fans… There’s always things that can upset you. Like a tennis player, like Roger Federer who just plays and is okay with playing and other players throw their racquets and scream — they can’t handle it. They can’t handle disappointment. We’re all going to be disappointed in life. Disappointed in people, friends and relationships. You can’t let that ruin your life. You have to find ways to be happy."

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