Maya Angelou tells the story of how she refused to speak
when she was a little girl. She had been raped, and a few days after she told
what happened to her and who did it, the body of her assailant was found in a
nearby field. From her perspective as a child, she believed her voice held the
power of life and death, so she quit talking to make sure she didn’t hurt
anyone else.
One morning, her grandmother told her, “Girl, you aren’t
fooling me. A lot of people think you’re stupid and you can’t talk, but I know
better. You’re smart, and someday you are going to be a great teacher.”
Maya thought to herself, “You don’t even know who you’re
talking to. I don’t even speak! How am I ever going to be a great teacher?”
She goes on to explain, “You see, I thought that the person
I was at that moment was the person I would always be, but the story of my life
hadn’t been written yet, and I was just living in one chapter of that story.”
“The story of your life has not been written yet,” she
continues. “Whatever you are experiencing, whoever you feel you are; these
things will not always be. No matter how young or old you are, you are just
living in the present chapter of your life – but the story of your life has not
been written yet. Every day, you are writing a new chapter. Just keep moving
forward, and you might be amazed at how that story ends.”
Sometimes I teach composition classes, and the first
question my students ask when I give an assignment is, “How long does it have
to be?” I always tell them, “As long as it needs to be to say what you want to
say,” and then I explain that they are focusing on the wrong thing when they
are worrying about the final product when they haven’t even began to write the
paper.I’m beginning to realize that I do the same thing. “The story of your life has not been written yet” has taken on a new meaning for me. Too often, I have been so caught up in trying to decide how my story is going to end that I don’t take the time to discover what it is about. I try to rush headlong into my future without stopping to experience the present.
Each day is a new chapter – a new adventure to be
experienced, and a new lesson to be learned. I don’t know where my path may
lead, and I won’t know until I open my eyes to where I am.