I know…I know…*drops face in palms in remorse*..even I can’t get over the shock and whilst I can’t declare an official end to this hiatus or promise an expected time, let’s just say phenomenal people elicit the incredible and the unexpected. .
***Long post alert! Couldn’t help it***
You see, I find that i’m best friends with old souls regardless of time and space. There’s something to be said for perspicacious individuals who you see yourself in, especially one you probably never met.
And so today, I dedicate this tribute to the grandmother I never met, a phenomenal woman in all shades, colours and hues- Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson). She was a prolific, award-winning author, poet, actress, academic and civil right activist amongst many other things.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‘Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.’
Maya Angelou
Of course I should have you know we are kinda related as we share something really significant in common. Before your curiosity eats you up, let me kindly share that her birthday is just two days ahead of mine. She was born on the 4th of April {that remarkable month where only resplendent people make their entry into the world 😉 }
You see? Really close. I’m sure you catch my drift. 😀
Pardon my lack of photo editing skills, but you just humour me and (try really hard to)picture a spate of silver hair right in the same position in my new haircut and there you have the granddaughter she never met. Told ya! 😀
It hurt to hear of her passing today even at age 86, but I choose to celebrate her life, a life lived in spite of the odds and limitations against, a life that gave, a life that loved, a life that sang, a life that read, a life that wrote, a life that savored nature’s blessings, a life that was open, humourous, truthful and human at the core of its essence. Maya was a Life c̶o̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶ Teacher. Oh! How she taught!
Rest your soul Maya! We love that you lived fearlessly, fully and wholly and that you were a rainbow in the cloud of millions, world over. Thank you for being a life-giving spirit and an inspiring one as well.
Sleep on woman after my heart!
Maya Angelou(April 4, 1928- May 28, 2014)
I am going to share below, her profound quotes that resonated.
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
“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.”
“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.”
“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.”
“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”
”Nothing will work unless you do.”
”Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
”Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
”Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.”
“I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.”
”Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
”Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”
“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.”
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”
“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”
“A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”
“I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.”
“Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‘I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.”
“My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked, a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”
“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.”
“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
“I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.”
“I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I’m a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself – all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.”
“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”
“What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.”
“All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.”
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
“My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.”
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”
“I work very hard, and I play very hard. I’m grateful for life. And I live it – I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.”
“I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.”
“If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.”
“We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!”
“Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‘Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.’ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.”
“We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”
“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels”.
“I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defence when and wherever needed.”
“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
“A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.”
“Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any man-made differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.”
“Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.”
“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”
“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”
“I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.”
“Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‘I’d like to write about that.’ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.”
“I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.”
(Ah! Woman after my heart indeed! She gets my love for this language beyond the superficial. *sigh*)
“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
“Life loves the liver of it.”
“I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.”
“All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided”.
“I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.”
“I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.”
“I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.”
“I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.”
(Ah! You see? You see?)
“When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‘Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.”
“If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you’ll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.”
“I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth.”
“All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.”
“My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.”
“One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.”
“I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.”
“When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.”
“Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‘I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.’ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‘Yes, I deserve it.'”
“The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.”
“When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.”
“Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‘leaders’ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.”
“I’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.”
See her beloved Oprah’s tribute
“I’ve been blessed to have Maya Angelou as my mentor, mother/sister, and friend since my 20’s,” Winfrey said following news of Angelou’s death. “She was there for me always, guiding me through some of the most important years of my life. The world knows her as a poet but at the heart of her, she was a teacher. ‘When you learn, teach. When you get, give’ is one of my best lessons from her.
She won three Grammys, spoke six languages and was the second poet in history to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. But what stands out to me most about Maya Angelou is not what she has done or written or spoken, it’s how she lived her life. She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace. I loved her and I know she loved me. I will profoundly miss her. She will always be the rainbow in my clouds.”
And Tyler Perry
“There have only been a handful of people in my life who have moved me, inspired me, encouraged me, and helped mold the man I amtoday. One of those people would be Dr. Maya Angelou. She was a woman I called ‘friend,’ ” Perry said. “Her words and her spirit are too powerful to leave this earth with her passing. Her legacy and poems will take wings, forever landing at the foundation of anything that betters humanity. Dr. Maya Angelou will live on in all of us who called her a phenomenal woman, phenomenally.”
Here’s Obama’s heartwarming tribute.
“When her friend Nelson Mandela passed away last year, Maya Angelou wrote that ‘No sun outlasts its sunset, but will rise again, and bring the dawn,” said Obama in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “Today, Michelle and I join millions around the world in remembering one of the brightest lights of our time – a brilliant writer, a fierce friend, and a truly phenomenal woman.”
Obama said Angelou’s background as a storyteller should be most cherished.
“Over the course of her remarkable life, Maya was many things – an author, poet, civil rights activist, playwright, actress, director, composer, singer and dancer. But above all, she was a storyteller – and her greatest stories were true. A childhood of suffering and abuse actually drove her to stop speaking – but the voice she found helped generations of Americans find their rainbow amidst the clouds, and inspired the rest of us to be our best selves. In fact, she inspired my own mother to name my sister Maya,” Obama said.
“Like so many others, Michelle and I will always cherish the time we were privileged to spend with Maya. With a kind word and a strong embrace, she had the ability to remind us that we are all God’s children; that we all have something to offer,” Obama added. “And while Maya’s day may be done, we take comfort in knowing that her song will continue, ‘flung up to heaven’ – and we celebrate the dawn that Maya Angelou helped bring.”
P.s; Did I mention she’s got a certain semblance in persona&strength of character to the late Nelson Mandela? I even think they looked alike in old age.
May the seeds she’s sown replicate beyond a hundred fold towards a richer humanity.
P.p.s; Shout out to Zeezy of life for her invaluable help in getting this post published. Bless your heart! Please read this rich tribute from the FAB sister.I enjoyed her angle http://eziaha.com/2014/05/29/i-hope-you-dance/.
Till we meet again, keep living resplendently!
Cheers!
Lizzie's Default 