Virtuous Souls

This morning, up early, I listened to an interview with Maya Angelou from a while ago while wrapped in layers of coats and sweaters and hoodies.

It has gotten cold out, and the rain sees to get down to your bones with its chill. 

Here is a transcript of something she said that resonates:

It's like the difference between facts and the truth:  Facts can obscure the truth. You can tell so many facts that you never tell the truth.

You say the places where, the people who, the times when, the reasons why, methods how, blah blah blah. 

But if I tell the human truth, if I tell it well, then a person in Bangalore, another person in Beijing, somebody else in New York City, another person in Mexico City will say "Yes. That's the truth... that's a human truth."

(pause)

(end transcript) 

As I made my way through the cold to my destination, she said one more thing that made me think of so much, as of late:


"You have to have enough courage.  It's the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can't be consistently kind, or true, or fair. Not consistently. You can be anything erratically."


be well; be warm; have enough courage.


k.


(image: Aurora Borealis (Substorm), Chena Hotsprings, Alaska, 1989, Kikuji Kawada via isidore tumblr)