Maya Angelou’s Principle For Life is Also a Stoic Rule I Try to Live By
Angelou’s Stoic secret
“I must do my part and remain unsurprised by the outcome.” It’s one of the many maxims I aim to apply every day. It helps me focus on my actions without getting attached to how things turn out.
Author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said something that beautifully explains this life mindset. “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between,” she wrote in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
Life will always have its own ideas. We can only hope, do, be and remain indifferent to the chaos.
Mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal compared it to an experience of a spiritual wager. In his book Pensées, Pascal says bet on God. Lose nothing if you’re wrong about his existence, gain everything if you’re right. I see that same logic at play in how you prepare for life. You tilt toward hope.
You prepare against despair.
But, you don’t let the in-between surprise you. That’s wisdom. You dance in its chaos called life. Hope is a fragile thing. It lifts you, but it also makes you vulnerable. Maya Angelou understood it. She recommends you hold hope in one hand and reality in the other.
