Constructive/Destructive

“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