Quote of the Day: Lupita Nyong’o on Joy and Resilience

What this quote means

On the surface, this is a quiet redefinition of joy itself. Most of us treat joy and pain as opposites — two forces that cannot coexist in the same space. Lupita Nyong’o gently rejects that binary. Joy, she says, is not the absence of pain. It is something that exists alongside it. The quote was born from her experience making 12 Years a Slave, a film about some of the darkest chapters in human history. Yet on set, she found that the cast and crew could feel deep happiness in their work despite the weight of the subject. It was, she said, a joy to go to work every day and tell that story.

The deeper insight is that we often postpone joy until the hard thing is over, as though happiness is a reward we earn only after suffering enough. Nyong’o challenges that waiting game. The word “acknowledging” is the fulcrum of the sentence: she is not pretending the pain is not there. She is seeing it clearly, naming it honestly, and choosing happiness anyway. That is not denial. It is courage dressed in calm language.

This philosophy is rooted in Nyong’o’s own journey. She was told early in her career that her skin was too dark for certain roles. She grew up between Mexico and Kenya, navigating questions of identity and belonging long before she ever stepped onto a Hollywood set. Her Oscar win was not just a personal triumph but a visible crack in a system that had excluded women who looked like her. The idea that joy and pain can hold hands is not a theoretical comfort — it is a survival strategy she has lived by.

In everyday life, this quote gives us permission. It frees us from the exhausting belief that we must fix everything before we can feel good. When your week is heavy, your energy is low, or the news cycle is relentless, Nyong’o’s words are a quiet invitation: joy is still allowed. You do not have to earn it. You only have to acknowledge what is true and choose to feel it anyway.

About Lupita Nyong’o

Lupita Amondi Nyong’o was born on March 1, 1983, in Mexico City to Kenyan parents. Her father, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, is a prominent academic and politician who later served as a governor in Kenya. The family returned to Nairobi when she was an infant, and she grew up immersed in Kenyan culture while attending an international school. She studied film and African studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts before earning a master’s degree in acting from the Yale School of Drama, where she was widely regarded as one of the most gifted performers in her class.

Her breakthrough came in 2013 when she starred as Patsey in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. The role earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first Kenyan, first African, and first Mexican actress to win an Oscar. She went on to star as Nakia in Black Panther, delivered a revelatory dual performance in Jordan Peele’s Us, and appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. She also wrote the children’s book Sulwe, which became a New York Times bestseller and won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work.

Beyond the screen, Nyong’o is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and a vocal advocate for women’s health. In 2025, she publicly shared her years-long struggle with uterine fibroids to raise awareness and encourage others to speak up. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2014 and has become a cultural icon known as much for her radiant presence as for her fierce commitment to expanding the stories we tell about women of colour.

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