What I (Almost) Know for Sure

I love Oprah Winfrey. Like, for real "honest-to-goodness don't nobody say nuthin' about her 'round me" love. Mostly I love that she is so obviously black. This seems mundane today, and limiting in light of who she has become, but you've got to remember the beginning. In 1989 there were 5 black people on TV and none of them were on daytime. When I was little girl black women on TV were nannies, caregivers, maids, and sassy sidekicks. Then there was a woman named Oprah, all brown skin, thick hips, and big hair. I loved her immediately and fiercely. At 8 years old I had no idea what an Oprah was, exactly, but I did know that she wasn't classically beautiful or embarrassingly funny. This thing called an Oprah looked like me and she was on TV because she was smart.

A few years back Oprah began writing a column in her magazine: What I Know For Sure. Every month I flip to the last page first to see what gem she's unearthed. Most times it's brilliant. It's always heartfelt. And after reading every one I am left feeling even more inadequate than when I began.

30 years of living and I don't know much of anything for sure. There are some beliefs I'm pretty damned passionate about. Like, men should not have more beauty products than the women they love and that failing to properly merge into traffic should be punishable by jail time. Beyond that and the standard stuff: do not kill (unless your life is threatened or he really, really deserved it), do not steal (unless it was grossly overpriced and just begging for it) and do not lie (unless the truth would cause more harm than good), I don't know a damn thing for sure.

Maybe it's my astrological sign, a science I'm not exactly for sure of either. As a Libra I deal in balance, yin and yang, masculine and feminine energies. Basically, I live my life in shades of gray. For me every absolute is tempered by mitigating factors and extenuating circumstances. Let's be real: if in the middle of being robbed by a gang-banger you manage to break free with both your life AND his stash of very good weed, do you feel bad for stealing? And, really, how many of us feel sorry for the guy killed by the woman he's been beating for the past ten years? Absolutes are never as absolute as they seem.

Yet we keep trying to create these standards, these unbreakable rules by which to live. We read Essence and Cosmo and yes, we even watch Oprah, taking from them our personal cues for right and wrong. We wait for our darkest secrets to be validated before we'll face them. We stay in relationships until someone gives us the right to be happy alone. We go from our parents' home to school to friends to spouses adopting different absolutes as we go just hoping they won't stop loving us.

I don't know an awful lot. I just know a lot of words to describe what little I do know. But I am fairly certain that absolutes are as fluid as the fragile minds that espouse them. Humanity, by its definition, is both stoic and brutal, marked only by its amazing ability to evolve and change. Who you are today is not who you were 10 years ago. And if you're living this life right you won't be the same person next week that you are at this moment. All you can hope for is the courage or the blind stupidity to live by your own rules as you go, causing as little harm as possible and sprinkling a little good when you can. Because about the only thing I am almost sure of is that living any other way, under rules of anyone else's design is both miserable and a sure way for your spirit to die.

You deserve better. You deserve your own drumbeat and a superhero theme song. You deserve absolutes that change as quickly as a woman's mind, allowing room for discovery and fun and love. You deserve all this and more. This, with all due respect to Ms. Winfrey's teachings, is about the only thing I know for sure.