“When people show you who they are, believe them.”
Variations of this quote, the words of the late writer and activist Maya Angelou, have been making the rounds on social media over the past few weeks.
Angelou, a sage to those in her inner circle as well as the multitudes of strangers who liberally quote her words, died 10 years ago. When one of her most famous quotes kept surfacing just after the presidential election, I thought it would be a worthy endeavor to reflect on Angelou’s work and words this Thanksgiving.
It turns out that Thanksgiving was one of Angelou’s favorite holidays, according to her estate. For years she hosted multi day celebrations to mark the holiday and offered friends and family a respite from life’s challenges at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“Now more than ever, we encourage you all to consider being of service in your respective communities and spread Dr. Angelou’s message of charity, engagement, acceptance, encouragement and love,” read a holiday message last year on her website.
I began my reflection on Angelou’s words with the quote above, which evolved from a conversation between Angelou and Oprah Winfrey in 1997. Angelou hosted a televised pajama party and book club meeting at her home for her book “Heart of a Woman” which was a featured pick on Oprah’s Book Club.
The women sat around chatting in their Karen Neuburger pajamas before the camera cut to Oprah and Angelou, lounging side by side in a gold metal framed bed. That’s when Oprah shared the best advice she had ever received from Angelou, broadcasting those famous words to the world — words Oprah would later amend in 2011 on “Oprah’s Lifeclass”:
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time,” she said to viewers.
Not only should we not make excuses for people when their actions don’t live up to our expectations, Angelou’s words, as remixed by Oprah, emphasized that we also shouldn’t let them fool us twice. And if they do? Well, that’s our own fault.
Oprah was one of the many women Angelou considered a daughter. Angelou gave birth to one child, a son, but in 2008 she wrote the book “Letter to My Daughter” for all women, in which she shared her life lessons and the conditions under which she learned them.
I hadn’t read the book in a long time, but I dusted it off and flipped through the pages in search of holiday inspiration. I wasn’t surprised to discover that so many of Angelou’s life lessons seem relevant for the times, even when those lessons aren’t delivered by Oprah’s silver tongue.
Angelou is honest about the importance of honesty: “One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we do say is the truth.” In context, she is making reference to those small social moments such as when someone asks, “How are you?” And we say, “fine” even though we really aren’t fine because no one wants to know how you actually feel.
Freeing yourself to answer questions truthfully may cause people to steer clear, but how liberating would it be to stop trading deep conversation for lies because we don’t want to deal with the truth?
Angelou also offers thoughts on vulgarity and violence. When we don’t have the courage to challenge coarseness, we are surely “brought low” by it, she wrote. If the emperor is standing before us and wearing no clothes we should tell him he is naked and not ready for public congress, she said.
When she explores the ebbing of our national spirit and the diminishment of our national expectations she also asks: “How have we come so late and lonely to this place? When did we relinquish our desire for a high moral ground to those who clutter our national landscape with vulgar accusations and gross speculations?”
Angelou then guides us to find hope in our hearts for American democracy and its tenets. “I believe that there lives a burning desire in the most sequestered private heart of every American, a desire to belong to a great country.” I read those words and felt doubt creeping into my own heart, so I know my reflection on that is incomplete.
It is strangely comforting to read these words written almost two decades ago. It is reassuring to read along as Angelou works it all out on paper, drawing on what was then seven decades of living to offer solace to her daughters of the present and future.
Maybe part of the reason Angelou celebrated Thanksgiving so intently is her deep sense of gratitude, a trait she cultivated throughout her 86 years of life. She described the moment, as a young adult, when she fully embraced gratitude and allowed it to guide her life’s work.
A 20-something Angelou had returned home from an opera tour in Europe to be with her young son, but she quickly found her emotions careering out of control. She couldn’t fathom raising a happy and liberated Black boy in a society that wanted none of that for him.
After a failed attempted to visit a psychiatric clinic, Angelou ran to the home of her friend and mentor and announced she was having suicidal and murderous thoughts.
“I’m telling you, I’m going crazy,” she repeated.
The friend handed her a yellow writing pad and a ballpoint pen and instructed her to write down her blessings. When she didn’t know where to start, he gave her prompts. By the time she finished, she was cured of her madness, she said.
I am clinging to Angelou’s words and actions this Thanksgiving, hoping they will help steer me away from a figurative madness and into a deeper sense of gratitude.
“Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude,” Angelou wrote, “If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today, I am blessed.”
Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.
About the Author
