Friday, December 21, 2007

"When people tell you who they are -- believe them."

"Oprah Winfrey once said that the best advice she ever got in her life was from Maya Angelou, who said: "When people tell you who they are -- believe them."

I've gotten good mileage from this advice over the years. Being raised fundie, you spend a lot of your life being told to believe someone else's preposterous interpretation of events over your own lying eyes. Growing up this way really twists your reality lenses; and those of us who come out of it as adults spend a lot of time and energy learning to see and interpret the world clearly again. Angelou's quote is one of the mantras that gave me permission to trust my own observations of what people were saying and doing, knock off the false hopes and wishful thinking, accept this information as literal truth, and rely on it as an accurate indicator about how they were likely to behave in the future. It's knowledge that was acquired late, but has since kept me out of an amazing amount of trouble."

Read the whole thing. It speaks not to just politics but to life.

2 comments:

jayne said...

So very very true. I was prepped at ayoung age to question my own reality.. only to find myself married to someone who again did that to me. He showed me loud and clear who hewas from day one .. but i didn't believe him. or me for that matter.
now i embattled with a monster and my sword isn't sharpened..
should have would have could have...

c said...

I applaud you for throwing off the shackles of religion. As a Christian, I didn't find out what God meant or what Jesus was really about until I read the Bible for myself. I had to throw off what people were saying on ALL sides and just ask God who He really is.