This morning, on my way into work – driving because I have an after-work appointment, I got to listen to a portion of Diane Rehm’s interview with Maya Angelou.
I came into it a little late, and had to get out of the car before it was over, but what I heard was tremendously interesting and inspiring. Interesting: Angelou talking about her log-time support of Hillary Clinton and how she is very “satisfied” with Barak Obama being our president-elect (very interesting).
But what touched me the most this morning was the thought that we ought to come to our lives with gratitude. That modesty is not the attitude to have; we should seek rather humility. (She said it ever so much more elegantly.)
These thoughts help me consider better ways of approaching my difficult relationship with my mom, especially important because I am having a difficult time coming to terms with what I fear is her impending death.
I may not be able to show as much love and compassion as I’d like to my mom. The kind I think she wants. But I can feel and show gratitude. Heartfelt gratitude. And perhaps that will release the kind of affection that will help her know I do love her. Deeply.
Find the show here; a link to the podcast should be available soon. So you can hear for yourself.
Oh, and Angelou has a new book out, Letter to My Daughter, described as: “Maya Angelou gave birth to only one child, a son, but says she has thousands of daughters of all backgrounds. A writer’s reflections on the life lessons she’d like to pass on.”
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i’m sorry this is something your faced with. your mom’s illness and mortality. i think it’s really good that it’s where you’re directing the message you heard this morning about humility. that’s revealing. it’s indicative of the healing you’re working on, not when/if something happens, but right now. BIG hugs.
(o)
I think maybe the hardest thing about parents and children is how seldom we can give each other the kind of love we most want and need. No shortage of love, but sometimes it’s like those cheap vitamins, insoluble, go right through you. With my own mother, I often find myself trying to find something I can give that she can receive, and it’s not often easy.
Thanks for sharing. We can learn so much from the words of a sage such as Maya. Thanks. Jann
This is what she said about gratitude:
I believe the most important lesson any human being can learn and practice is an attitude of gratitude…gratitude [...] It’s best to long for, pray for, and develop humility. Humility comes from inside out. It says there was someone before me and that I have to do my best to help pave the road for someone who is yet to come. That is saying thank you to all the ancestors. Thank you for taking it. Thank you. If my ancestors came from Eastern Europe trying to escape the pogroms, little and large murders. Thank you. Thank you for surviving. If they came from Asia in the 1850s helping to build this country and unable to bring their mates for decades, unable to even own property in this country they were building, I say thank you. Thank you for taking it. Thank you for the women who stayed down there in the steamy plants down in lower Manhattan. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for Spanish speakers, for Africans, ancestors who came here and lay spoon fashion, that means back to belly in the filthy hatches of slave ships and in their own and in each others excrement and urine – thank you. Thank you. Now, having said that, what do I do? What is my job? My job it seems to me very clearly is to make my son a person who the next generation will say thank you for.