Requiem For Madiba

A dream maker has passed.

He saw visions the rest of us could barely imagine.

But mostly he saw the best of what we all might be.

He saw in us a spark of genius, talent, potential, divinity and brother/sisterhood.

Leaders like him scare me because they demonstrate what I am most afraid of: the me I might be if I allowed myself to believe the vision that is my birthright.

And he acted on it. Acted in the face of injury, insult, and prison, maybe even death. Hatred surely.

His path was the rocky one, the heroic undoing of complacency and comfort of the status quo. 

I have to wonder where and how that level of conviction and courage developed.

Was he told by his father that he was born to greatness? Did he win races as a child? Did he have a vision under the stars while working in the fields of Africa?

How did that tree of unshakeable courage take root?

Most likely it was the result of small things, messages, luck.

So many things can derail a man or a woman from his or her destiny.

However he got there, he worked from that base to set in place social and political structures that would allow millions the chance to better achieve their visions, heart's desire, their fullest potential.

No small feat that.

I see broken men all around me. Some of them broken by poverty, drugs, incarceration. Others by their own poisons, a self-defeating, inside job.

I am one myself. But I know that and watch for the signs that I am living under the shadow of the angry, broken, spiteful man. 

Broken men like me are dangerous. They tend to tolerate the breaking of others. They may even do it themselves. They are subject to angry leaders who blame others for problems. They identify with their wounds, their damage.

Mandela saw this and side-stepped it. He could have been a demagogue of indignation and revenge. He could have joined a long line of false prophets and dictators who enrich themselves on misery and genocide.

But he did not. He resisted black domination as much as he resisted white.

He saw past his anger and desires to exact a price for his sacrifices. He did not ask for the tooth or eye in payment for what was taken from him.

Yes, he was a political hero, a statesman.

But he was also a man who mastered his demons, a man who forgave, a spiritual example.

It is this that I toast. It is this to which I bow.

He has shown me that there is a man inside me, down there somewhere; he taught that I have to break my own chains as part of breaking others'.

He reminds me that it is my work to keep digging, to unearth the treasure of that shining, fearless, indomitable inheritance.

I raise my cup, lower my head, hear the music that runs through me and all things.

Adios, Madiba.