I perhaps have a different relationship with death; I don't fear it as other people do. I have come to recognize death for what it is - not so much an undiscovered country as the road to awe. We tend to focus on death as an ending, but really, there's something to all this circle of life, ashes to ashes business.
What we are is recycled material, old words put together in new sentences in a story that is continuously being written. It's as true of biology (what genes we pass on to our children; how our raw material gets recycled into the earth, a tree, a seed and eventually, another animal) as it is of culture (the ideas we pass on, the legacies we leave behind).
Nelson Mandela was a world-changer as much by what he did as by how he lived. In a time where we have a growing crop of selfish, bitter leaders who put their own interests before those of their people - who have lost their way - Mandela was different.
Everyone talks about his humility, his lack of vindictiveness when he had every right in the world to hate - and how by his very being, he served as an inspiration, a superhero of a leader in our midst.
What Mandela has done - the words he shared, the deeds he has accomplished and the model he set for others - will never be undone. That he himself has passed is not sad; death is a journey we all must take and Mandela lived a good long life of accomplishment that anyone of us could only aspire to.
But he is gone now - we no longer have any one in our midst to look to as that leader, that role model.
Those who hold the reigns of power no longer have a better leader than themselves to adulate, and in so doing abdicate their own responsibility to lead.
Those who hold the reigns of power no longer have a better leader than themselves to adulate, and in so doing abdicate their own responsibility to lead.
A giant has left the earth but what he stood for, what we all admired about him still remains. It has to be thus.
Like any agent of change, it is the role of the Master to show us what is possible, but the day inevitably comes when they must pass on and it falls to others to pick up their torch. This is how great leaders inspire movements.
Nelson Mandela the man is dead - he has, as the euphemism goes, passed on. But to pass on implies someone else is picking up.
In this way, Mandela has not left us, nor will he leave us - he has extended a gift, the light of his vision for humanity, to the rest of us.
It's a daunting prospect, this - stretching out our hand, taking the weight of responsibility, trying to aspire to be more than perhaps we are. We are only human, after all - Mandela seemed to be so much more. We're afraid to rise up to that level; we're afraid we might fall.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela
Fear is what divides us but when we overcome it, we find something else we've been missing - hope.It's a daunting prospect, this - stretching out our hand, taking the weight of responsibility, trying to aspire to be more than perhaps we are. We are only human, after all - Mandela seemed to be so much more. We're afraid to rise up to that level; we're afraid we might fall.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela
Let's keep the fire burning.
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