Matthew McConaughey’s “Green Light” Speech Will Make You Feel Better

Matthew McConaughey’s public persona is an amalgamation of two of his most beloved characters: David Wooderson and Rust Cohle. In other words, he’s a constitutionally laid-back dude prone to philosophical rambling, incoherent and profound, but relentlessly positive.

The video message McConaughey posted on Twitter is a perfect distillation of this persona, and probably the most comforting thing we’ve seen since the coronavirus crisis began.

After a call for everyone to take the necessary precautions and care for one another, he segues into a weird personification of the virus.

“Right now more than ever before we’re all dependent on each other than we ever have been, but we have an enemy in coronavirus that is faceless, that is raceless, sexless, nondenominational, and bipartisan, and it’s an enemy that we all agree we’re gonna beat. We wanna beat him and we’re gonna beat him, alright?” (alright, alright).

It’s nearly incomprehensible, but the message somehow comes through loud and clear. It’s what comes next, a new McConaughey metaphor, that really reinforces this optimism.

“There is a green light on the other side of this red light that we’re in right now, and I believe that that green light is going to be built upon the values that we can enact right now, the values of fairness, kindness, accountability, resilience, respect, courage. If we practice those things right now, when we get out of this, this virus this time might be the one time that brings us all together and unifies us like we have not been in a loooong time.

“So yes, let’s see if we can make some lemonade out of this lemon that we’re in the middle of, turn a red light into a green light (double palm punch and double-barreled finger guns at the camera).

“Just keep livin’.”