Can And Will

At her country store, Maya Angelou’s grandmother tolerated a few customers who were chronic complainers, but no matter how tough things got, her outlook on life remained positive, and she instilled that attitude in her granddaughter. Once, when a bellyacher entered the store, she told Maya to listen. Sure enough, he whined about everything — work, weather, and so on. After he left, Maya’s grandmother spoke words of wisdom that became a guiding principle of Maya’s life:

“Sister, a lot of folks who went to sleep last night — poor and rich, white and black — will never wake again. They’d give anything for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't, change the way you think about it.”

Although my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird did not possess the inimitable command of words that the great writer Maya Angelou possesses, his wisdom was as sound as hers. Whenever I began complaining — especially if I used the word “can’t” — the old black man always interrupted by saying, “They killed ole Can’t, and whipped ole Couldn’t until he said he could.” That saying was so indelibly pounded into my head that to this day, decades after his passing, I still stop short when I’m about to say, “can’t” or “couldn’t.” One warm spring day many years ago, when it was planting time on my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, Jaybird taught me a lesson about avoiding negative thinking in favor of positive thinking that remains with me to this day. In the past when planting time rolled around, Dad made the tough decisions; my job was to manage labor, equipment, and chemical applications. But that spring, following surgery, Dad was bedridden. The responsibility for getting those seeds in the ground was on my shoulders, and I was scared to death. Any wrong moves at this critical stage of making a crop would haunt us throughout the growing season, and could eliminate any hope of coming out ahead at year’s end.

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As Jaybird and I looked across all those unplanted fields, negative, pessimistic thoughts tormented me. “Jaybird, I don’t know what to do or where to start. I just can’t….” Instantly, I was interrupted by those same words I’d heard over and over again. And then he said something else I have never forgotten. “Square your shoulders — don’t be a boy, be a man! Complaining about what you don’t have or can’t do is like telling the Lord ‘No thank You’ for what you do have and can do. Change your attitude. What you are facing ain’t a problem — it’s an opportunity.” With Jaybird’s guidance and relentless encouragement, the crop got planted on time and turned out well. By using his inimitable teaching skills, he taught me that uncertainty, doubt, and fear can never be defeated until those negatives — Can’t and Couldn’t — are replaced by these positives: Can and Will.