This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What drives us? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.
Driving along the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu, I see the last reminders of the fires that devastated this idyllic stretch more than a year ago. Cranes and workers are leveling the terrain, putting up foundations of what will soon become a new crop of homes dotted along the coast. The surfers have returned to hop the magical waves. The canyons are green and lush again. There is a peace in the haze of fog. This is paradise.
After the Palisades fire, there were virtually no visitors here. This stretch of the coastal highway became a ghost town, and many businesses were forced to close. As I browse antique pottery at a local shop, the owners tell me they lost their home in the fires, but they’ve vowed to stay and rebuild: “This is paradise, after all. Paradise is always threatened. But we persevere.”
They’re hopeful. They have their lives. And so, they remain in paradise with dreams of health, harmony and love. That’s the one word that keeps coming back to me: love.
The love of creating moments in any medium, especially those that make people feel seen, is what keeps me going. It’s the simple things, like when my husband and I watch the little bird I call Gilbert fly back and forth catching flies and feeding them to its nestlings under our roof. It’s honest connection — asking someone, “How are you tonight?” and seeing a glimmer in their eye as they say, “Thank you for asking.”
Love is the very essence of being human. To love and to be loved are hard-wired into us, instinctively bonding us to one another as we move through life and its seemingly insurmountable challenges. When we act with love, we create the collective energy necessary to sustain us through the myriad things that don’t work out as planned, the people who come and go, the enormous fires that rage.
As I think about my life as a multi-hyphenated artist and the places this has taken me over the past 35 years, love has been the one constant throughout. I grew up in Philadelphia, where, as a freshman in college, I worked at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. My inquisitive heart fueled me to know why people did what they did. I read so many books on how to become the kind of “evolved” person who has a strong sense of self.
The more I read, the more I realized that if I wanted to pursue my passion for the arts, I would need the support of a strong foundation of people who believed in me, people I could create universes with. The pursuit of an artist’s life holds no guarantees of success — it’s a roller coaster of survival. As you bypass the many land mines hiding in plain sight, love, in its many forms, is the parachute that helps guide you to safety.
A passion for life led me to San Francisco when I was 21 years old. I joined my best friends — three guys living in a tiny studio apartment in the Tenderloin — who had moved to this mecca of counterculture to redefine themselves. There, I began my career in the theater and started sowing the seeds of my artistic identity. I grounded myself in the diverse community of artists who were not afraid to let their “freak flags fly” as they created potent art that reflected or questioned who we were in the world.
After about 10 years, I felt like I had achieved all that I could as an artist in the Bay Area, so I shifted my roots to New York City in search of a new challenge. I had the ups and downs of any tried and true working artist: no agent, no access. Just courage and faith that, as a palm reader once told me, “I had a lot of people waiting for me.” Although it would take time for her words to come to fruition, I, a dreamer at heart, genuinely believed that every person I met was waiting for me. Waiting for what I had to offer. When you move with that spirit, I think anything is possible.
I have a tattoo on my left arm of a quote from the Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage to my friend Marcus Gardley, a prolific writer in his own right. When he had a moment of discouragement and thought to put the pen down, she told him that the importance of an artist is to “just last.”
When Marcus shared that story with me, I’d been working on and off for 20-plus years. At this point of my career, I could feel myself running out of fuel and desperately needed to hear those words to stay the course. To just last. But I knew that by lasting, I also needed faith, hope, passion, a great work ethic and that radiating energy of love that had reassured me time and time again that I had something to give to this world.
Love is why we’re here on this planet; the relationships we build are how we persevere.
When I met my now-husband at a Walgreens in Berkeley, Calif., love said, “I can take care of you so that you may fly.” Raúl has tethered me in a great way: He’s my home, yet he lets me fly. His love makes me feel liberated. I’m no longer a balloon soaring through the sky alone.
When my parents passed away, the love that they had for me and the love that surrounded me gave me the strength to keep going. I learned lessons large and small from my working-class family. They always laughed a lot, threw the best dance parties and believed in the strength of community. I get these gifts from them.
And when I was on a career low and close to leaving my passions behind, that love whispered in my ear in the form of my friend Daniel Breaker, who told me, “You aren’t done, friend. I got you.” He believed in me enough to share his management team, and we’ve been making strides ever since. He also knew that these men, Brian Liebman and Cory Richman, would not just represent me, they would love me. They are my brothers.
Opening myself up to love is how I ended up back in California — except this time, I returned for its easy way of living. I’m very much a Southern California guy, prioritizing wellness, slow drives through winding mountains, ocean views and nature. This is where I’ve finally achieved that love and life balance I read about all those years ago. I can slow down and speed up at my own pace, all while contemplating the picturesque ridges of the Santa Monica Mountains and the meandering, lifelike, meditative curves of a highway that’s come alive again.
I keep going, too. I just last. I take that windy road — and I do it all with love.
Colman Domingo is an Emmy winner, as well as a two-time Oscar, Tony, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominee. He was named on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2024.
The post Colman Domingo: Our Eternal Engine appeared first on New York Times.
