Mandela

I accept that for a white man in Duck North Carolina to have anything valuable or interesting to say about the life and passing of Nelson Mandela might seem presumptuous. I hold him dear though, I keep a copy of his inaugural address in my desk drawer. Of course he was transcendent. I'm sure lots of people keep a copy of his inaugural address in their desk drawer. I keep it there because it's inspiring, but more because it reminds me of the man who gave it to me. I worked at a summer camp with a young, privileged, handsome, white South African name Gareth. He gave me a Zeroxed copy of the address. He carried a stack of them in his travels. I remember being mildly puzzled at this, but intrigued. He seemed genuinely to believe in Mandela, and everything he stood for. Though I imagined that his parent's thoughts on the subject had to be more ambiguous. This resonated with me because I am a product of the American South. We seem several generations slower here.

I visited South Africa and Mandela's cell on Robben Island. The Apartheid Museum left a mark on me. There were several halls of video-shocking video. To invoke blood in the streets, is often to exaggerate. I witnessed, in repetition the brain matter of children in the streets; entrails severed and spilling. The most gripping and disturbing video I had ever seen. Violence in the abstract is offensive. Violence in living color is nauseating. The impression, of what black South Africans endured during Apartheid was seared into my conscience.

Mandela became a focal point in my thoughts as years passed. Understanding him seemed to become the key to understanding what I had seen in South Africa--it wasn't all museums... I've pondered him, and this is how I've tried to distil him:

He was above all gracious. His forgiveness of his captors is legendary, and in many ways the seat of his power. Most of his negotiating leverage sprang from his suffering, and his refusal to pity himself over it. He was also right, and this cannot be under estimated. No tyrant could take a page from Mandela's book and hope to succeed. That was not all though, he was not a saint, in the classical sense. He accepted, if not embraced violence. He was characterized as a terrorist. Or was it freedom fighter? Either way, he was not a pacifist. Above all he grew. He evolved. He did not let his early acceptance of the necessity of violence undermine his eventual move to grace.

In my search for way to be a husband, parent and citizen I struggle to find my way. Mandela reminds me that the way is not a route--not something you can read as a list of directions. It is a path, it evolves with us. And though all parts of it may not be what we imagined, as we are in them they are in us. The journey is changing us as we seek our destination. Participation is mandatory. You cannot get there from here. You must become someone else--or yourself--as you go, to realize you've even arrived.