Forgiveness: My Muse - Maya Angelou?

When I first developed awareness about the guidance that I had around me all my life, my questions were endless. In my early years of learning, I learned about forgiveness. It's not that easy to forgive another much less ourselves because that takes knowing and knowing takes time. I was taught that in order to love ourself we have to learn to forgive ourself. Knowing ourself allows forgiveness to ourself. Knowing others allows forgiveness to others. Not too many people prefer to forgive - hating may be easier. However, I was also taught that forgiveness doesn't mean constantly putting up with what we feel is bad behavior.

As years progessed, I realized that there are many thoughts in the universe that we can receive. To me, at the time, the message was more important than the messenger. Then one day, I read something from Maya Angelou that made me think that even people who are still physical can be an inspiration. Even without knowing them, they can become someone's invisible muse. Their thoughts can be received and can still teach us. Often we may think what a great idea or thought we had. In reflection, maybe it was Maya Angelou, or her spiritual teacher, who taught me about forgiveness.

~~~~~
This is what she wrote: “I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes - it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
~~~~~

Could this be our real trial in understanding forgiveness? Letting go of what we think we know in order to know more or better? After all, did this person make me angry, or did I allow it due to not knowing how to handle the situation better? And, if I know better, will I do better? I think Maya Angelou, in any dimension, would hope we would.