“I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me.”
I was watching a video of Maya Angelou talking about the most
valuable lessons she’s learned over time and she spoke of this quote she has
once read, I forget now who the speaker was.
This saying, in its entirety, means that nothing that another
human being says or does, no matter how bad or awful, is something that I
myself am not capable of. Whether it’s the woman who killed her children, or
the man who raped his wife, or the poor boy from the streets who became a
millionaire, nothing another person does be it good or bad, is something I am
not capable of.
Maya Angelou said that if you could soak in even 10% of the
gravity of these words and live by them on some level in your life, then you
have known what it’s like to be human.
For some reason, these words struck me. With all the awful
things people had done to me, all the hurtful words, actions, thoughts,
reactions.
I had faced and known a
lot of hate and a huge lack of love.
Through all of this I would always tell myself that I could
never do that or say that or act that way. I would tell myself these people are
bad people and so they do bad things. While this is still true, and cruelty is
something I am still incapable of, I know now that all people are a product of
something, even the most hateful ones.
I need to remind myself that the reason I am incapable of
such harm is because I reacted to my life and to my situations constructively,
rather than destructively. That not all people have the same strength or the
same environment to choose otherwise.
People are only as good or as human as their choices.
But not everyone is aware or fully capable of understanding
that every action or word they speak is a choice and is a responsibility of the
highest order.
And this is the fundamental difference between a good person
and a bad person.
The war between constructive and destructive.
Dilz
