We all heard the words and saw the deeds with dumbstruck awe. Who does that woman think she is? And as the clock struck daylight on cue with civil rights, the new laws, and conformity. Wow! How great not white can be.
The love, the hope, the dream is the apex supreme. Beyond the terrifically tremendous trauma and jugular-pitching, nerve-wracking drama, Maya Angelou epitomized the “Get over whatever it is and rise” syndrome.
Forgive yourself first. Have mercy on the assailers of avariciousness, greed, self-serving power hungry, the jealous, competitive rivalry and the gut-wrenching, mean-spiritedness. Forgive them and give them another chance, for surely “they know not what they do.” This is born of ignorance, ritual, tradition and a nature of the world since the beginning of the human kind.
Our nature has been to apply brute force to conquer and reign, to force submission, through physical and psychological deprivation; an ungodly, abhorrent enslavement that leaves the body, heart and eventually, the absolute brainwashed soul, adrift.
The moral of this long-winded story is to lift yourself up. Pull and tug free-willed ones with you. Dump the tray of hate, prejudice and discrimination, aggressively.
Forgive, toil, and insist on the more perfect and better of all that is wonderful, aromatically tingling, thrilling and awesome, and enlighteningly good!
Above all else, remember each and everyone, you included, is human.
Live, love, and fight the undertone of infalibility’s target, the malfeasance of human nature.
Let us all take heed:
Keep the hope
Keep the love
Be an example when you can
And last and most importantly,
Phenomenally rise.
Thank you, Maya Angelou, for living your life, surviving and forging a light, a path and a way to keep arising each and every day, no matter what.
