I haven't been given the opportunities to experience many different cultures, yet through this book I found myself identifying with the beautiful culture Mandela has helped create.
To experience pain without muttering a word is a sign of strength. To hold your head high even when you want to hang it low is a sign of character. To not let your woes burden anyone else is a sign of greatness. Nelson Mandela’s ability to not wear his troubles for everyone to see is beyond admirable. He had experienced so much by the time he was a teenager, yet he did not complain, ask why or dwell. His narrative reveals that he accepted the ways things were, but refused to let the weaknesses in life go unchanged. A passage from “Long Walk to Freedom” that moved me was when Mandela said, “a man must suffer in silence.”
I believe that this passage says a lot about Mandela’s walk through life. He used this quote when describing what was expected of him when being circumcised as a young man. He did not show any emotion or sign of weakness during the ceremony. His father died, a death that was certain to end his childhood comforts. Mandela did not mourn or make things difficult for his mother, he accepted it. He had to leave his childhood home, friends and land. Mandela describes the loss, yet does not do so in a bitter or empathetic way. When his mother gave him to away, he did not ask her why or doubt her love. Yet, he accepted these conditions internally. Abstractly, his ability to not let his pain and trials get the best of him was what ultimately made him the international icon he is.
I got the honor of meeting Eddie Daniels, Mandela’s cellmate at Robben Island, this past semester. He described what it was like being a young activist during the apartheid and the brutality of what he saw. It was amazing to hear someone speak about his personal relationship with Nelson Mandela. I had never heard anyone speak so highly of anyone. Daniels said that the only time he saw Mandela show any sign of sadness was when his mother died. One time, when Daniels was lying sick on the floor, Mandela sat with him for hours until he was well enough to be by himself. Mandela is full of grace and servitude to those he leads and befriends.
A concrete example of his mindset of “suffering in silence” shows in Chapter 49, when Mandela refuses to want the surgery on his heel, because where he grew up, there was no such thing as an African doctor, and going to see a white doctor was unheard of. It was the summer of 1979, and Mandela says that at that stage in his life he saw seeing a doctor as “unmanly” and having a medical procedure as “even worse”. I believe that it was due to the culture that Mandela grew up in and his own tribulations that he experienced early on that made him develop this silent suffering.
“I was always prepared for the hardships that affected me personally. But my family paid a terrible price, perhaps too dear a price for my commitment.” Mandela knew what he had to be done to lead his people to freedom, and tried not to let his own troubles get in the way. He had “twin obligations”, one to his family and one to this community. He had to suffer for one twin constantly.
Mandela suffered the woes of everyone. He kept his personal woes silent and spoke outwardly for the freedom of his people. “I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.”
Mandela spent 27 years in prison. 27 years his family didn’t have a father, 27 years he couldn’t taste life, 27 years he couldn’t be free. These 27 years of suffering in silence, were sacrificed so that he could lead his country to multi-racial democracy so his people could be free, so he could be free.
0 comments:
Post a Comment