I wanted my peanut shot for Sami Chlaus but then today got taken over by Nelson Mandela.
It can hardly be a shock to hear that an old and ill man died but it's the first thing I heard today after the alarm clock and was surprised to find myself in tears. Everything there is to be said about Mandela has been said a million times over today but, as this is my journal, I'm adding my things.
Firstly, South Africa and Nelson Mandela were probably the first bits of news from out there in the world that filtered through to my brain as a child. Sure, there had been other things but they all sounded a lot like "war here" "war there" "more war somewhere" and, apart from a vague assumption that there was always a war somewhere, I was mainly absorbed in a tiny world that involved the best places to mix up water and dirt to make mud pies and which trees were easy to climb and which goat would put up with me talking to it for hours...
I remember watching footage of protests at a shanty town, the young kids throwing stones at armoured police. The realisation that the kids were black and the police were white. Asking questions about it and realising for the first time that there was such a thing as racist language and it was happening in the home I was growing up in.
Looking at the newspaper my parents read and watching them listening to the news and listening to their comments and slowly but surely distancing myself from attitudes that disturbed me and I felt were wrong.
Mandela became a bigger reality through music - singing the songs, finding out more - as much as possible. A moment, standing in the sun at school between one lesson and the next, eyes closed, face to the light, smelling sea air and someone walking past singing "free Nelson Mandela" and that being one of those Moments in life where you know that everyone who is thinking rightly is thinking the same thing - Nelson Mandela should be free, we are right not to buy those products, we're not just "making a fuss" or "doing it to be awkward" - we're doing it because it is the right thing to do.
Later on the joy when he was set free and the amazement at the "truth and reconciliation" - a concept that has probably had more effect on how I have lived my life since than the years of childhood conservatism.
Studying brought me in contact with Mandela's life again - through literature and politics - and, again, there was inspiration to be found, again the feeling that this is a great man, full of flaws and love.
Today, I looked through articles about his life, read some quotes, thought about all the people I know who have had their lives touched in some way by the modern history of South Africa...and I thought again, he was right, the way he went about it was right.
We should all do that. Keeping going, keep believing that universal freedom is possible, keep refusing to be satisfied with less, keep acting out of love to make being human something better...so we reach the potential that is in us, as individuals and as a society. I'm going to climb that next hill, I hope you are too.