Tag: love

  • When Someone Shows You Who They Are: A Lesson from Maya Angelou

    When Someone Shows You Who They Are: A Lesson from Maya Angelou

    The older I get, the more I say it.

    “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    It is not just a quote. It is a warning, a wisdom, a truth that only deepens with time. And the woman who spoke it, Maya Angelou, was more than a poet, more than an icon—she was a force. A woman who understood the world not just as it was, but as it could be.

    Since it’s Women’s History Month, I could think of no one better to celebrate.

    Maya Angelou did not just write about life—she lived it. She survived it. She bore witness to its struggles, joys, and unbearable weight, and she did it all with a voice that refused to be silenced. She wrote with clarity that stripped the world down to its barest truth. And if you were listening—really listening—she was telling you exactly what you needed to hear.

    “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    How many times have we ignored that truth? How often have we made excuses for people, choosing to see them as we hope they are instead of who they have proven themselves to be? How much pain have we invited into our lives because we refused to accept what was right in front of us?

    But Maya Angelou knew.

    She knew that wisdom was not just in books but in lived experience. That some lessons had to be felt before they could be learned. She also knew that to survive in this world—to thrive in it—you had to recognize the truth in people, in systems, in history itself.

    She knew women, in particular, have been told to be patient, to give the benefit of the doubt, to soften themselves to make others more comfortable. But also that survival requires something stronger. It requires discernment. It requires the ability to see the truth and to act on it.

    Which is why we celebrate her.

    Not just for her words, but for the life behind them. For the way she carried herself, the way she refused to be broken, the way she taught an entire generation—generations after her—what it means to walk in your own truth, unapologetically.

    So this month, as we celebrate the women who have shaped history, let us also remember the wisdom they left behind. Let us remember Maya’s lesson. Let us see people for who they are—not for who we wish they were.

  • Chasing the Sound

    I am not a musician. Never have been. Never will be.

    There is no hidden talent waiting to be discovered, no secret virtuosity buried in my bones. My fingers do not dance over keys, my voice does not soar, my hands have never bent an instrument to my will. If music is a language, I am a listener—nothing more, nothing less.

    But if there is one thing I do have, it is love. Deep, abiding, obsessive love. A love that has shaped the way I see the world, that has scored the highest and lowest moments of my life. Music is not just sound—it is memory, it is history, it is an entire world condensed into three minutes and forty-two seconds of melody and truth.

    And yet, I have been starving.

    Somewhere along the way, I built a cage out of my own taste. I found the artists I trusted, the ones who never missed, the ones who spoke in a language I already understood. And I stayed there. I convinced myself that good music was a known quantity, that the search was over, that I had already found the best and could close the door behind me.

    But art is not meant to be safe. It is not meant to be comfortable. And in my hunger for the familiar, I had stopped listening. Really listening.

    So I am making a choice.

    I am stepping outside of the walls I built for myself and working my way through Billboard’s Top 100 Albums of All Time. One by one. No skipping. No excuses. Just me, the music, and my unfiltered thoughts.

    This is not about agreement. It is not about validation. It is about discovery, about stretching myself past what I think I know. Maybe I will find something that changes me. Maybe I will confirm my suspicions that some albums just aren’t for me. But either way, I will be listening.

    Because music is bigger than taste. Bigger than opinion. It is history and culture and revolution. It is joy and pain and longing. It is the closest thing we have to time travel, a way to reach back and touch something real, something that once was.

    So I will listen. And I will write. Not as an expert, not as a musician, but as a man searching for something he didn’t even realize he had lost.

    Let’s see where this takes me. K.H