A friend of one of my Facebook friends posted that he saw no sizable difference in the number of comments from African-Americans and whites about the passing of Dr. Maya Angelou and concluded that, based on the number of comments, she meant no more to African-Americans than she did to whites.
What the person failed to take into account was that maybe we African-Americans were just stunned into silence. Perhaps we could not find the words to express how we felt.
I know I couldn't.
What can any writer write about one of the most gifted writers of our generation? What could any one writer say that hasn't already been said by the obituary writers, friends, family, and luminaries?
With that in mind, I wrote nothing. That is, until I summoned the courage to write this entry and share the greatest lesson Dr. Maya Angelou taught me and perhaps others.
Dr. Angelou's quote about courage being the most important virtue because, without it, you cannot practice the other virtues consistently, has been repeated a lot lately, as well as some of her other memorable lessons: "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time," and "People may forget what you said or what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
However, the most important lesson I think Dr. Angelou imparted upon all of us is one that she didn't speak, but instead lived: You don't have to be just one thing in this life. You can be many things.
How often do we limit ourselves, or allow ourselves to be limited, thinking trite aphorisms like, "Jack of all trades, master of none," or walking away from something we love because we don't have the requisite 10,000 hours supposedly needed to master it?
What if Dr. Angelou had settled on being only a cable car conductor? Think of all the other gifts she possessed and bestowed upon the world -- writing, dancing, singing, acting, directing, writing music, teaching, and being a civil rights activist and friend to the likes of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, James Baldwin AND Oprah Winfrey! And she could cook, too! Oh my, what a life! She lived many lifetimes within one lifetime. Why? Because she didn't limit herself to being just one thing.
I've always had a penchant for doing many things and, combined with being a Gemini, that has caused me to be branded as uncommitted, flighty, indecisive, and a "master of none." But Dr. Angelou was writing music and working very late in her life. She did not let her age limit her creativity and curiosity. Even at an age when, statistically speaking, she probably didn't have 10,000 hours to master one more thing, she never stopped doing the many things about which she was passionate. Her refusal to recognize limits on what she could be is the greatest lesson to me and, in my view, to the world.
So summon up the courage to do all the things that interest you, that fuel passion within you. Don't care what people think. So what if you don't master any -- you're not being graded! Dr. Angelou believed that courage is the greatest virtue because you could not practice the other virtues consistently without it. I believe that courage is the greatest virtue because you cannot be your most complete and realized self without it.
Thank you and Godspeed, Dr. Angelou. And thank you, Stanford University, my alma mater, for providing me the opportunity to meet Dr. Angelou.
Showing posts with label Geminis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geminis. Show all posts
"Flight" of the Geminis
Imagine a workplace retirement luncheon where the guest of honor is being congratulated on thirty years of service with the same employer. Imagine that, during this luncheon, there's a person in the back of the room who is saying under her breath, "Shoot, if you look up thirty years from now and I'm still here, just shoot me."
That person is a Gemini.
I'm a Gemini, and this is my birth month. In celebration of my birth month, I'd like to take this opportunity to clear up a few things about Geminis. We're terribly misunderstood.
Most Geminis, including myself, are accused of being "flighty" -- that we move from job, career, spouse, etc. fleetingly, as if we are incapable of doing anything for a sustained period of time. The term "flighty" is used derisively when applied to us.
That's because people don't understand Geminis. What they don't understand about us is that we have a deep appreciation of life and how fleeting it is. If there were a motto for Geminis, it would be, "Life's too short to ________________(fill in the blank). When our needs or priorities change, we Geminis don't fight the change for the sake of racking up consistency points in a system without rewards; we roll with the change and adjust accordingly. Others see such changes, whether they are changes in jobs, spouses, or even the cities where we live, as evidence of us being "flighty"; we, on the other hand, see such changes as a natural shift in our happiness demand curve. Because life's too short.
And why do our priorities and needs seem to change more often than for other astrological signs? Because the two biggest transgressions you can commit against a Gemini are to bore her or waste her time. As for boredom, Geminis have an insatiable need to be learning many new things, and we don't see any inconsistency in mastering two or more disparate disciplines. If someone with a different astrological sign said they wanted to be a neurosurgeon and a stripper, they'd dismiss the idea as crazy before they could even pursue it. A Gemini, on the other hand, would not only pursue these two disparate paths at the same time, but would explain to sceptics the synergy between the two: "Well, you see, the manual dexterity and strength needed to effortlessly glide down a pole enhances one's ability to do surgery, assuming you don't hurt yourself . . . ."
As to wasting our time, Geminis are quick to assess a situation and determine whether they can achieve what they want by doing what they're doing. If not, at least one of two things happens: We either change what we want or change what we're doing to accomplish what we want. Either way, to the other astrological signs, we appear flighty. But to us, there's no medal in life, no reward whatsoever, for continuing on a path that can't get us where we want to be. We either change the path, change the destination, or both. But to look up after staying on a path for, oh, thirty years or so to find yourself someplace you knew you didn't want to be? That is a living hell for a Gemini. The idea that we've wasted our precious time on this earth chasing something we knew we didn't really want is anathema to a Gemini, whether we've wasted it in a career or in a relationship.
It is my Gemini ability to reassess what I want and recalibrate how I'm going to get it that led me to be able to effectively and effortlessly extricate myself from bad relationships when I was single. When I started dating after breaking up with BMNB, I would stay in a relationship to prove a point or to not hurt the other person's feelings. As I got older and trusted my instincts, i.e., "I know how this movie ends and I don't like it," when it came to relationships, I got better at parachuting out before things got ugly. Even better -- I got to the point where I could size a guy up five minutes after he spoke to me and know whether there was any potential there. The failure to master subject-verb agreement was often a dead giveaway. My male friends said I was harsh. I, on the other hand, thought I was just efficient in using my time on this planet. There's no sense in thinking a guy's going to master subject-verb agreement if he hasn't by age 35 and no sense in thinking that I'm going to be able to overlook that.
So when your Gemini daughter, sister, friend, etc., changes jobs, men, or cities, don't question her choice or call her "flighty." She knows what she wants, even if it's changed, and she's going after it in whatever time she's got left on this earth. Instead, perhaps you should question your own choices and ask yourself whether you're staying the course for consistency's sake or for happiness' sake. For Geminis, it's the latter.
That person is a Gemini.
I'm a Gemini, and this is my birth month. In celebration of my birth month, I'd like to take this opportunity to clear up a few things about Geminis. We're terribly misunderstood.
Most Geminis, including myself, are accused of being "flighty" -- that we move from job, career, spouse, etc. fleetingly, as if we are incapable of doing anything for a sustained period of time. The term "flighty" is used derisively when applied to us.
That's because people don't understand Geminis. What they don't understand about us is that we have a deep appreciation of life and how fleeting it is. If there were a motto for Geminis, it would be, "Life's too short to ________________(fill in the blank). When our needs or priorities change, we Geminis don't fight the change for the sake of racking up consistency points in a system without rewards; we roll with the change and adjust accordingly. Others see such changes, whether they are changes in jobs, spouses, or even the cities where we live, as evidence of us being "flighty"; we, on the other hand, see such changes as a natural shift in our happiness demand curve. Because life's too short.
And why do our priorities and needs seem to change more often than for other astrological signs? Because the two biggest transgressions you can commit against a Gemini are to bore her or waste her time. As for boredom, Geminis have an insatiable need to be learning many new things, and we don't see any inconsistency in mastering two or more disparate disciplines. If someone with a different astrological sign said they wanted to be a neurosurgeon and a stripper, they'd dismiss the idea as crazy before they could even pursue it. A Gemini, on the other hand, would not only pursue these two disparate paths at the same time, but would explain to sceptics the synergy between the two: "Well, you see, the manual dexterity and strength needed to effortlessly glide down a pole enhances one's ability to do surgery, assuming you don't hurt yourself . . . ."
As to wasting our time, Geminis are quick to assess a situation and determine whether they can achieve what they want by doing what they're doing. If not, at least one of two things happens: We either change what we want or change what we're doing to accomplish what we want. Either way, to the other astrological signs, we appear flighty. But to us, there's no medal in life, no reward whatsoever, for continuing on a path that can't get us where we want to be. We either change the path, change the destination, or both. But to look up after staying on a path for, oh, thirty years or so to find yourself someplace you knew you didn't want to be? That is a living hell for a Gemini. The idea that we've wasted our precious time on this earth chasing something we knew we didn't really want is anathema to a Gemini, whether we've wasted it in a career or in a relationship.
It is my Gemini ability to reassess what I want and recalibrate how I'm going to get it that led me to be able to effectively and effortlessly extricate myself from bad relationships when I was single. When I started dating after breaking up with BMNB, I would stay in a relationship to prove a point or to not hurt the other person's feelings. As I got older and trusted my instincts, i.e., "I know how this movie ends and I don't like it," when it came to relationships, I got better at parachuting out before things got ugly. Even better -- I got to the point where I could size a guy up five minutes after he spoke to me and know whether there was any potential there. The failure to master subject-verb agreement was often a dead giveaway. My male friends said I was harsh. I, on the other hand, thought I was just efficient in using my time on this planet. There's no sense in thinking a guy's going to master subject-verb agreement if he hasn't by age 35 and no sense in thinking that I'm going to be able to overlook that.
So when your Gemini daughter, sister, friend, etc., changes jobs, men, or cities, don't question her choice or call her "flighty." She knows what she wants, even if it's changed, and she's going after it in whatever time she's got left on this earth. Instead, perhaps you should question your own choices and ask yourself whether you're staying the course for consistency's sake or for happiness' sake. For Geminis, it's the latter.
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