I was listening to the Rob Lowe podcast Literally yesterday and Oprah was his guest. It is a great podcast, by the way, but one thing about that episode has stuck with me. Rob asked Oprah about things she has learned from people she has interviewed. Oprah shared her deep and abiding friendship with the Phenomenal Maya Angelou. The biggest lesson she learned from Maya was, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
I was thinking about that this morning and was going to write about pop culture and the forced apology which is rarely sincere – or even an apology. Rick Schroeder’s recent outburst about masks at Costco was top of mind. A$$hole.
But as I was in bed this morning hitting the snooze on my phone, I noticed an alert from FB Messenger. You could have blown me over with the breeze from Seamus’ tail wag when I read a message from one of the furever moms of a dog I fostered. Let’s call her JA. JA works for a major corporation and has a lot of pull apparently and wanted to share my resume internally. She had read my recent Facebook post about how tired I am of talking about myself. It was a bit of a humble brag because I have been interviewing like mad – which is a great thing. But the downside is, selling myself is hard work and it doesn’t come naturally to me. Quite frankly, I really am tired of talking about me. There are so many more interesting topics.
As I snuggled up to Tate and listened to my morning sounds: Seamus snoring, Charlotte purring and Gimpy yelling at me, I thought, JA is a more deserving subject than any jerk celebrity trying to dial back from who they really are. JA showed me who she was by adopting a dog sight unseen. She showed me her authentic self as we texted daily about her new furbaby and all of the preparations she was making to make her pup happy from day one. I knew who she was when she showed me the picture of her soulmate pup in her arms and the joy that radiated from both their faces.
Nothing may come from her act of kindness. I suspect it won’t, but she showed me who she is and I believe her.
Edie Rodetsky 