Saturday, December 7, 2013
I was saddened to learn about Nelson Mandela's death last night. The planet
has lost an inspirational figure, an exemplary leader who devoted his life to
equality and human rights, and one of the few peacemakers I have always admired
for his lack of bitterness. It amazes me how a person could spend nearly three
decades in prison and still have faith in man's goodness, and even come out
ready to forgive the people who put him there. That is the man this planet has
lost. That is the man this planet will miss. But death is something inevitable,
the hero himself said. "When a man has done what he considers to be his
duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace." So, rest in
peace, Nelson Mandela.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
- 1994. Excerpts from an interview for the documentary 'Mandela'
"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."
- 1995. His autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom
"Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."
- 1995. Long Walk to Freedom
"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison. "
It seems incomplete to quote Mandela without including the poem that he had famously recited:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.- “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley
In December 2009, a biographical sports drama film was made based on a book by John Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation, about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which was hosted in that country following the dismantling of apartheid. The film was entitled Invictus, taken from the above poem, and featured this song “Colorblind” by Overtone as one of its soundtracks: (Click here to see the lyric)
To the man whose body may have left our world, but whose spirit will be forever celebrated,
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