Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison were born on the same birthdate, February 18: Morrison in 1931 and Lorde in 1934. Thanks to the good folks at Many Voices, I’ve been listening to Audre Lorde speaking to students at UCLA. The date of the lecture is unclear, but the video uploader places the session in the early […]
Expect error
My generation, the children of West Indian immigrants, didn’t learn to look kindly on imperfection, even when it was all we had. My mother’s mother trained perfectionism into her children by scrunching up inattentively ironed shirts and requiring the poor unfortunates to iron them again. My mother once punished me for not starting a summer […]
The gift of non-attachment
Recently I talked with a former colleague about the gracious way our community had held space for both of us to outgrow and leave it. “It’s been like an incubator,” she said. “Like an eggshell,” I said. If you’re a growing chick, there’s no point in getting attached to your shell. It nourishes you, makes […]
Comparison and benchmarking: related, not identical
“Comparison is the thief of joy,” so the proverb tells us. This saying discourages us from side-eying others’ accomplishments and minimizing our own. It also warns us against envy, the kind of attention to others that corrodes our ability to embrace them and share in their joys without suspicion or spite. There are great reasons to be […]
When good doesn’t want to be great
When I first heard Maya Angelou teaching Oprah Winfrey, “When people show you who they are, believe them,” I said amen with the rest of the viewers. Believe them! They know themselves much better than you do.” —Maya Angelou Just as Winfrey said, though, it’s a lesson that can be easy to affirm and challenging to apply. People and organizations set the […]
Allowing yourself to change
Allowing yourself to change is a complex thing if only because it’s as easy to become attached to our own work as it is to become accustomed to our daily routines. Just as others come to have expectations of us, we also come to have expectations of ourselves, and so when we find ourselves growing […]
