The Courage of Maya Angelou and The Baton She Passed to Us
Maya Angelou left us with words of beauty and a reminder of how the best in each of us might rise above the worst. She was a person of remarkable sensitivity.
She did not, however, leave us only with beautiful poetry and stories of positive things. She reminded us that it is only by having the courage to “win back our finer and kinder and healthier selves,” to educate our children about purity, temperance, goodness, worth, and moderation that we will stem the rising tide of immorality.
We need to examine what the absence of those qualities has done to our communal spirit, and we must learn how to retrieve them from the dust heap of nonuse and return them to a vigorous role in our lives.
The task she passed to us is a massive one because we have too often allowed degeneracy, indifference, vice, greed, and cruelty to take the place of virtue. We have rewarded those who become famous or wealthy, no matter the how of their rise, allowing meanness to invade our minds and actions as we adulate or imitate their ascent.
It takes cognitive awareness and communication skill to avoid doing this – the ability and courage to stand up to those who act solely in their own best interests. It takes uncommon introspection and people like Richard Martinez, who lost his son in the Isla Vista killings of six U.C. Santa Barbara students, to stand up and say “No more!”
As we remember and honor Maya Angelou, let’s also bear firmly in mind the task she set before us to counter the slippage of our culture into acceptance of dishonesty and selfishness. She did not intend for us to be oblivious to vicious politics or naive in the face of abuses of power. Angelou did not expect the task of correction in our society to be an easy one or that those gentle of spirit would, without exhaustive effort, win the day. She left us with an actionable calling to do our part today and everyday – to notice evil so that we might face it down and keep it from consuming us.
In Maya Angelou’s own words, the goal is this:
I would like to see us go on calling on the good example and upon virtue itself with the purpose of inviting them back into our communities, our businesses, our homes, our lives, to reside in those places as favored friends.
To the extent each of us stands up in our corner of the world to the dismissal of virtue and goodness, we will depart this life as Angelou did with dignity having lived a life of positive purpose. We may trip along the way, but by holding firm with courage we will have made a difference.
photo: Gil C/Shutterstock.com
