Celebrating Black History Month

Welcome back to Living Up. In this post celebrating black history month, we delve into the idea of living up to our expectations—both self-imposed and those from others.

In this space, I explore continuous improvement across various aspects of life, including personal growth, education, spirituality, health, and our connections with others and the universe.

What is Living Up to something or somebody?

According to online Cambridge Dictionary, it is to achieve what is expected, especially high standards, with such words as “we expected a lot of her, and her performance lived up to our expectations.”

Merriam-Webster says it is to do as well as someone expects one to do.

Collins Dictionary says if someone or something lives up to what they were expected to be, they are as good as they were expected to be.

My blog, Living Up, is about constantly improving our lives in all aspects of growth, education, principles, spirituality, health, connection with the universe and our planet, communication with our family and friends, pretty much what you think is good for you, which can be subjective.

When I started the blog, February was coming up, and I wanted to add my contribution to the celebration of Black History Month. So much of African American History has been lost that we must try to bring it up and use it to inspire us all, young and old, to continue to better ourselves.

I started with a post titled Celebrating Black History Month, and with my second post, I realized that I needed to change that title and make an introductory post with the names of the people I expected to cover in the following weeks. I figured each additional post would have the name of the person I wanted to talk about. As I went along with this idea, I realized that I wanted to continue to discuss further into the year. 

There are so many historical African American figures that we need to make as popular as Benjamin Franklin and Amelia Earhart, who have not received enough recognition for how they shaped the culture and history in America, that I will continue as long as I want to because I truly love History and this is a blog where I write what makes me happy to learn, what inspires me to continue to be better.

With that said, I have Phillis Wheatley, Bessie Coleman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Eliza Mahoney lined up for the next few posts.  As the year goes by, each month will distinctively have a celebration that marks the month, and with it, we will likely have an African American figure we can shed light on. In mid-February, here is an updated post and a better start to 2024.