Your job is to know it.”Īnd that, my friends, is what I now know for sure. “You don't need another person, place, or thing to make you whole. The first time she said that, the words felt strange. Her greatest lesson to me: “You are enough!” Whether sitting at her kitchen table and listening to her recite poetry (sometimes her own, but mostly others’-everything from lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar to a sonnet by Shakespeare) or watching her speak to an audience of thousands, as she did earlier this year in Texas, I always come away inspired to be more of myself. “Don’t blame or judge them for what they don't know. “Be patient with young people,” she told us in Washington. Never a complaint about anything or anybody. She has been an incredible role model for what getting older can be. Several years ago, when I asked her what it was like to turn 80, she said, “ Baaaby, the 80s are hot! You want to try and make it there if you can.” What I realized at the Smithsonian: Her greatest lesson-besides her gems of insight and inspiration-is the way she has approached aging with such acceptance and assurance. (“Baby,” she once chided me, “they show you and show you, and you still don’t believe what you see! Why does it take you 29 times?” That conversation was life-changing for me.) “When people show you-or tell you-who they are, believe them the first time” is my all-time favorite.

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