Your Impact Is Bigger Than You Think It Is
A powerful lesson from Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou
Your impact is bigger than you think it is.
It's every life you've touched. And every path you've crossed.
When Oprah Winfrey, winner of forty seven Daytime Emmy Awards, opened a boarding school in South Africa for academically gifted girls from impoverished backgrounds, she told her friend, Maya Angelou, that this school would be her greatest legacy. Oprah said, "It will make such a profound difference. It will change the trajectory of girls' lives. It will impact generations to come."
And Maya Angelou, poet, recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more than fifty honorary degrees, stopped her short and said (paraphrasing), "You will never know. Because you never will know what you motivated people to do and change in their lives. Your legacy is every life you touch! It's every person who ever watched your show and felt something, or was moved to do something. People who went back to school, left an abusive relationship, stopped hitting their children, went to therapy, no longer remained silent, and changed their lives. It's not one thing—it's everything!"
Oprah says this was "an eye-opening, enhancing" moment. "Aha! I took it in, thought about it, and have never let it go."
She later said, "people think their legacy is what they build, or what philanthropic gifts they grant. And it's partly their legacy. But the biggest legacy is the impact they have on other people. And it happens with our actions every single day."
I'm happy you're here, and that our paths crossed.
