The Light of Deep Wisdom: Maya Angelou

 

"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."

I think of all the wonderful and wise quotes attributed to Maya Angelou, this one has impacted me most. I first read it written on the wall of a college classroom where I was doing a presentation on Reproductive Justice and Abortion.

I realized, in that moment, that while the information I was about to give them was important, my attitude, the way in which I presented the information so that it would have an impact and be retained, was even more important.

Indeed, I think I understood more clearly than I had ever before that this was one of the key components of leadership. This one sentence has changed the way I see myself, the way I present myself to others and the way I have taught and mentored future leaders in my care.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian Baxter Johnson, a nurse and card dealer.

For the first three years of her life, her family lived in her maternal grandparents home. Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".

Ms. Maya's life story has been documented in a series of seven autobiographies, primarily focusing on her childhood and early adult experiences, The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

When Angelou was three and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage" ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception" to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II, because the general store she owned sold basic and needed commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments".

Four years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother eight, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning" and returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who told the rest of their family.

Freeman was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Four days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.Angelou became mute for almost five years, believing she was to blame for his death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone."

It was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen and observe the world around her. Her wisdom, she maintains, was born of suffering.

Ms. Maya was an accomplished person in a variety of ways. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.

She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa.

Ms. Maya  was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her ninth decade of life. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Here are some of the things she has said which have personally guided me:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

"The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise."

"Hate, it has caused a lot a problems in the world, but has not solved one yet."

“In all my work, what I try to say is that as human beings, we are more alike than we are unalike.”

“Life offers us tickets to places which we have not knowingly asked for.”

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

Angelou died on the morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.

Although Angelou had been in poor health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography about her experiences with national and world leaders.

During her memorial service at Wake Forest University, her son Guy Johnson stated that despite being in constant pain due to her dancing career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the last ten years of her life. He said, "She left this mortal plane with no loss of acuity and no loss in comprehension."

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia!