Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names.

~ Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013)

Not you, Nelson Mandela. One hundred years ago, you came into this world with boldness and made your mark on it – Madiba will ring out forever. Today, former President of the United States, Barack Obama, is in Johannesburg, to commemorate the anniversary of your birth, and he is doing so with an eloquence and a rallying cry that many Americas have missed – a reminder to cleave to your values of democracy and diversity, of equity, of kindness:

I believe in Nelson Mandela’s vision. I believe in a vision shared by Gandhi and King and Abraham Lincoln. I believe in a vision of equality, justice, freedom and multi-racial democracy, built on the premise that all people are created equal.

Madiba, I am drawn back to June of 2013, to when we heard news that you were gravely ill. As reports poured out of Pretoria, South Africa that you were on life support, we held our breath, not wanting to accept that you were frail at 94, ill, and nearing the end of your life. Then – and today – in my mind’s eye, you are still at the beginning of your life as Mandela, the free man, who stepped onto the world’s stage in 1990 after spending 27 years behind bars.

In the darkest days of Apartheid, no one – other than you yourself – could have imagined the man in that tiny cell as the future President of your country, that you would one day stand among rock stars and royalty and popes and presidents to advocate for democracy and justice, to inspire a vision of peace that transcended race and creed, that you would matter to so many people and that he would make so many people matter.  People like me. As Obama is reminding us today:

Through his sacrifice and unwavering leadership and perhaps, most of all, through his moral example, Mandela and the movement he led would come to signify something larger. He came to embody the universal aspirations of dispossessed people all around the world.

Mandela mattered to me because he embodied what could be.  Like Martin Luther King‘s dream of what America could be and like the peace once envisioned for Northern Ireland by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, Mandela’s vision of South Africa as a democratic rainbow-nation inspired the first all-race democratic election, moving more than 17 million black South Africans to vote for the first time.  Such a sight to behold, even on a tiny television screen in a tiny country on the other side of the world. Before us, a reminder that anything can happen, that Seamus Heaney‘s hope and history can rhyme.

For my 24th birthday not long before I emigrated to the United States, a boyfriend surprised me with a ticket to Paul Simon’s Graceland concert in Dublin.  Boisterous and beautiful, the performance sparkles in my memory as one that transcended the ugliness of apartheid. Simon had been and still is widely criticized for performing in South Africa, but how could I fault him for accepting an invitation from black South African musicians to collaborate on some of the most hopeful and uplifting music ever created? This was glorious music that represented the “days of miracle and wonder” that were possible in the heart of Nelson Mandela or, years earlier, in the universal dream of Martin Luther King. In accepting a Grammy award for the album, Simon said of his fellow musicians and friends:

They live under one of the most oppressive regimes on earth today, and still they are able to produce music of great power, nuance and joy, and they have my respect for that.

Simon was also one of the first people Mandela invited to South Africa. I imagine a smile spread across Mandela’s face – showing he was no longer a prisoner – not merely because the bars had been removed, but because he had left bitterness and rancor behind. Not everyone could or would. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had deemed Mandela a terrorist, speaking for most of her party. I remember well, when the Iron Lady took office, her strident refusal to enforce sanctions on apartheid while much of the world was doing so. Her policy of “constructive engagement” with the country’s white minority government polarized her such that following her death, there were reports of only a few tears shed in South Africa.

As young university students in 1984, we sang along with The Specials urging those who could to “Free Nelson Mandela.”  How could we not? His release was a moral imperative; it was the right thing to do against a racist regime. We were young and full of hope for a better future, and it was through that lens that Thatcher and others in her party appeared resolute in their support of white rule which seemed only to prolong Mandela’s imprisonment in that tiny cell.

On the other side of the argument, there were those, including De Klerk, who felt that “Thatcher correctly believed that more could be achieved through constructive engagement with his government than international sanctions and isolation of the South African government.”

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. It always does.

When Mandela walked out of jail, the world cracked open. While enormous challenges lay ahead and even more bloodshed, apartheid would eventually come to an end. Together, De Klerk and Mandela would rise up to be honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace for their shared vision of a South Africa without apartheid, of a democratic nation. Perhaps this would be the example for other countries beleaguered by bigotry and bitterness, proof positive that it is possible to sustain humanity in a world defined by brutal divisiveness.

Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award inspired by fellow Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney’s “From the Republic of Conscience,” was presented to Mandela in 2006. Perfect then that Heaney would be the first to congratulate Mandela thus:

To have written a line about “hope and history rhyming for Mr. Mandela in 1990 is one thing . . . to have the man who made them rhyme accept the Award inspired by my poem is something else again.

At the beginning of the summer of 2013, I imagine Seamus Heaney was vexed over the thought of a world without Mandela. I think we all were. I remember a Sunday morning conversation with my husband about Mandela’s charisma and fortitude, his inestimable influence –  the “Madiba magic” that changed the world. Drinking our coffee, aware of our smallness in the world, we were sad that Mandela’s time was coming to an end. I didn’t want to believe it – the world still needed him, and so I  turned to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the way I still do in the in-between times.

And then, just six months later, Madiba was gone. Seamus Heaney was gone. My husband was gone too. Gone. Like three shooting stars – startling and beautiful and gone forever.  For a time, it felt like the world might end.  But only for a time. Only for a time.

There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

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