Nothing Human is Alien to Me

I woke Saturday morning to the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Oh no. Oh, oh no. Not now. I closed Facebook and that flood of posts. I opened it again. Channel grief into action, I read. I looked away.

I have these elder heroes, people of those earlier generations whom I’ve imagined as great guardians or goals, or signs of life well-lived. Inspirations so far removed, it seemed, from the struggles of youth. They did it, I say. Look.

As she has for so many progressive folks in the US and beyond, Justice Ginsburg has been one of these for me. And Ginsburg’s is one death that, practically speaking, impacts millions of people’s daily lives. And so we’re mourning, worried, determined, all at once–

When Maya Angelou died, gosh, it was 2014. Six years ago now already. Another hero. When she died, I was teaching. I saw the news in a spare moment at the computer, immediately went out into the hall to find another English teacher, who would understand.

At first I thought my grief was that her voice was lost. But of course it never will be lost. Rather, it grew frozen, locked in time. She was becoming in that moment as I searched for my colleague something already of the past. Forever she will say the same things now. She’s no longer looking at the world with us in this moment, interpreting for us. Instead now, we must interpret her old words. What would Maya Angelou say? But perhaps that’s always been the task, for us as readers, to imbibe the soul so purely that we’ll know.

Angelou, Ginsburg, these people are far away, and perhaps such distance is necessary. Public figures, known mostly for their public works. It’s the distance that makes them heroes without complication. The vaguely known always takes on qualities of the extreme. The grass is always greener when you haven’t looked too close. And why must you look? I sometimes ask. Green grass is so nice.

I remember the pang when I read Angelou’s Gather Together in My Name. How much I’d loved I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and her poetry I’d read here and there. How much I’d loved All God’s Children Wear Traveling Shoes. And Gather Together in My Name, I loved that too, until the introduction of the two lesbian sex workers.

In Angelou’s writing, these two women became caricatures, their sexual orientation seeming hand-in-hand with their other unsavory traits. Angelou’s strength had so inspired me, and here I saw it turn to something cruel, personally painful. I kept reading, waiting for a redemption. It came, a little, but I’ve never forgotten. Each of us is kind and cruel and an inspiration and the most human human being who ever lived.

I think then of this idea, that Angelou shares in this video: “Nothing human is alien to me,” she quotes from the Roman playwright Terence. The worst and the best of humanity are all possible for each of us. These heroes can say things hurtful. We can take heroic action too.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, her entrance to the past, we do need to channel grief out into action. My husband has been busy as I write this post, in these things more practical than I, planning donations to candidates who will keep up Ginsburg’s legacy, support Black Lives Matter, and keep pushing for a better country.

I think it’s helpful to have heroes, anyway, heroes too good to sully, those horizon-ringing beacons way out there. But I think they may blind us.