A Little Maya Angelou Wisdom.
Wise, poetic wisdom, that’s the brand of Maya Angelou. One of her most famous quotes has defined how I’ve tried to live my life: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Our very first MEA cohort five and a half years ago named themselves after “Maya.”
In preparation for Juneteenth, I recently stumbled upon this wisdom from Maya,
“Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe. Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious apparitions, who come, go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen...I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry the accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”
What say you? Can we evolve out of our youthful ways based upon life experience? Or, do we cling to our mindsets and beliefs from home all the way to our rest home?
P.S. We have a couple upcoming MEA Baja workshops led by black faculty that I’d love for you to know about. Create a Vibrant Life Through Spiritual Minimalism with the remarkable mindfulness teacher Light Watkins (July 23-30) with me and my co-founder Christine Sperber co-leading. And, Restoring Our Roots to Restore Inner Strength with the power couple Leslie Salmon Jones and Jeff Jones (August 6-13) and Scott Shute. Check both workshops out and know that we still have financial aid available for both.
