If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the challenges one faces in relationships due to high personal expectations and intensity.
Maya Angelou acknowledges the difficulties of living with her due to her high standards and the challenges she presents, both to herself and to those around her. She recognizes that her drive and intensity can impact her relationships, making them more complex, but also enriching. This quote highlights the struggle between personal ambition and the dynamics of living with others, emphasizing that intense personalities can create both challenges and growth in relationships.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about personal growth and its impact on relationships.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes →I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at commensurate speed.
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
In order to be a mentor, and an effective one, one must care. You must care. You don't have to know how many square miles are in Idaho, you don't need to know what is the chemical makeup of chemistry, or of blood or water. Know what you know and care about the person, care about what you know and care about the person you're sharing with.
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A lot of my chosen family is black and I say that unabashedly. For anyone who doesn't understand that, they just don't understand me and my generation because especially in the LGBT community, the concept of chosen family is so important and it's a survival tactic.
With soldiers, their wives are so fundamental in their relationships, and yet there's this kind of other war happening back in the States, where wives of soldiers don't quite understand what their husbands have been through, because their husbands won't really talk about it, and that's really the hidden war.
Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement.