Sunday Reflections — Navigating life with Maya Angelou
This week, Sunday Reflections bring you select quotes from acclaimed poet and author Maya Angelou:
“Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.”
“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”
“We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat so that we can know who we are. So that we can see, ‘Oh, that happened, and I rose. I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn’t run away; I rose right where I’d been knocked down’. That’s how you get to know yourself.”
“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me, if I do that well enough, then I’ll be able to look after someone else — the children or the husband or the elderly. But I have to look after myself first. I know that some people think that’s being selfish, I think that’s being self-full.”
“Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, ‘Just a minute. I’m worth everything, dear’.”
“I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.”
“If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up — lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.”
“I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it’s given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: ‘All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit — beginning with my own’.”
“And one of my absolute favorite quotes of all-time, one that I’ve adopted as one of my greatest life mottos: Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go’.”
This selection is from online resources in the public domain.
